The Last Guardian
by Turtle2
Summary: Young Blades on PAX: Why is Jacqueline's cross worth dying for? Some will stop at nothing to get it.
1. The Cross

Well folks, I really liked this show and thought it deserved at least a little better closure than it got. And no, I didn't rifle through PAX's shelf and steal the show for monetary purposes. I do however own the character of Badger, so if you'd like to borrow her... Actually, I'd be flattered. Please ask first, though.

And by the way, there's a lot of talking points in this intro, but it gets more exciting later, honest.

Enough of the weenie disclaimers. On with the show!

Siroc and Ramon yawned and trudged their way to morning exercises. It was cool, even for dawn, and Ramon's a.m.-frown was deeper than usual.

"All I'm saying is that I'd rather do these torture sessions Duval calls training in the middle of the night than at this hour."

"Because you stay out half the night with your lady callers anyway."

"Don't scold me. It's too early."

"Don't drink so much. It makes you a grouch in the morning."

Ramon scowled. "Yes, Mama. Maybe if you didn't stay up half the night fiddling with your contraptions, you'd be able to last more than two minutes with any oaf in the cardinal's guard... _Dios mio_. Are they at it again?"

They had just rounded the last corner of the walkway and come into full view of the courtyard set aside for drilling. D'Artagnan stumbled backward on the retreat as he fought to parry Jacques's dizzying sword, the clanging of their blades the only sound in the otherwise empty yard. The morning fog swirled around the pair, stirred by their movements.

Ramon and Siroc exchanged a look. From the look of them, they'd already been at it for a while: Jackets shed, shirts sweat-ridden, long brown hair escaping from the ties. Jacques jumped back to escape a side-swipe from D'Artagnan, and then drove in with an onslaught of forward strikes that forced him back again.

"Five francs on Jacques," Ramon murmured.

"I'm not stupid, Ramon. D'Artagnan may have won the first round or so, but Jacques always gets him on endurance."

As if affirming the statement, Jacques suddenly darted in past a wide stroke from D'Artagnan and body-checked him, sending him to the ground. From the flat of his back, he looked up the blade of the rapier pointed at the bridge of his nose to the stony face of Jacqueline Roget. The two stayed as they were for a few moments, both too out of breath to speak.

Siroc tsked. "That boy has a lot of anger."

"Si."

In the courtyard, D'Artagnan found he was halfway happy to have lost, just so that he could lie down for a moment.

"That'll be one for you, I suppose," he groaned.

Jacqueline blew a sweaty strand of hair out of her eyes, nodded and lowered her sword, letting him up. He grimaced as he got to his rubbery legs. This was getting to be a pattern: Ever since her brother had been killed some months ago, the woman had been on some strange obsessive training spree. He wouldn't normally mind. Who better to have at the top of her game than the one sworn to watch your back? The only problem was when she dragged him out of bed before the crack and made him be her straw dummy until he was too tired for drill.

The saving grace of course was that he got to be alone with her.

"You need to quit opening up your flank," she told him. "One of these days, you're going to get skewered like a chicken."

"Don't think this means anything. You just wanted it more, that's all."

"Very funny."

"Oh, yes," D'Artagnan said. "Getting my wagon fixed by someone half my size always puts me in a joking mood."

"Maybe if you'd practice more," she said, swinging her sword in the air to loosen her stiffening arm.

"Maybe if you'd let me alone for a day and let me get back to the top of my game. I know you promised Gerard that you wouldn't rest until you found out the secret behind that cross of yours, but you never promised him I wouldn't."

At the mention of her brother's name, Jacqueline snapped angry eyes at him. He instantly regretted saying it. He of all people knew how important the subject was to her. Her brother had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and faced the cardinal's guard just to bring the tiny silver crucifix back to her. And for what?

What indeed.

"Again," she said.

D'Artagnan, who had been about to apologize for bringing up the sore point, blinked at her.

"What?"

"Let's go again."

He laughed as she settled into a fighting stance.

"Oh, no thank you. I think I'll go pluck out my nose hairs one by one instead."

"Come back here! We're not through yet."

D'Artagnan turned back around.

"Jacques, my arms feel like pudding. If I don't catch my breath before Duval gets here, he's going to think I'm going soft. Do you want to explain to him that I've just been taken to the cleaners several times already this morning?"

Jacqueline clenched her jaw and looked down. D'Artagnan sighed.

"Look, I know you have clues to find and mysteries to unravel. How is beating the tar out of me every morning going to help?"

"I just... I want to be ready." She drew the cross free of her shirt and looked at it. "Gerard died bringing this back to me. Who knows what I'll face in finding out why? And if I can't make it past those things, if anything tries to stop me the way they stopped Gerard and I didn't do everything I could to prepare..."

She looked away again. It was all right, D'Artagnan mused: She didn't have to say it.

He couldn't have died for nothing. Not Gerard.

"All right, all right. Once more. But from now on, you drag Siroc and Ramon into the rotation. I want at least to have Fridays off."

"Come now, _companero_," Ramon said as he and Siroc sidled up to them. "I know people in town who would pay money to fence with the famous musketeer LePonte. You should be grateful we get to do it for free."

"I'm not famous," said Jacqueline. "And sadly, the people of whom you speak are all women."

"What do you mean 'sadly'? If they're all women, then so much the better."

"You two! Thank God. Would you please see if you can wear him out? It's like playing fetch with a puppy."

D'Artagnan coughed when Jacqueline elbowed him. Siroc smiled crookedly.

"This is why I prefer anonymity. Everyone wants D'Artagnan the younger for his training partner."

"Trust me: It's not all it's cracked up to be. Besides, we all know you're the one who needs the practice," said D'Artagnan.

"I'd say you're all the ones who need to practice."

The four musketeers snapped to attention at the voice of their captain. Duval tapped his way across the flagstones from the barracks. They tried not to notice that his limp seemed pronounced today. The damp cold must be bothering his old wound, but he was the last one who would ever admit it.

"So. When is the attempt on Louis's life to be made?"

"Pardon, Captain?" said Ramon.

"Well, since you're all talking your way through the drill period, I can only assume that you have something more important on your minds than keeping your skills sharp. And since the only thing I can imagine being more important would be a confirmed plot to assassinate our king, I would very much like to know the details."

Sheepish looks were exchanged.

"We were just, er, comparing technique, Sir," said D'Artagnan.

"Good. I look forward to a demonstration at the end of the morning. For now, pair off and run the mantandre-chappelle."

Suppressing groans, the four started off for the yard. The mantandre-chappelle was the most tedious drill they knew. However, they hadn't gotten more than a couple of steps when Duval's voice cut back in.

"Not you, LePonte."

Jacqueline froze, the hackles on her neck shooting up.

"Sir?"

"I want a word with you. D'Artagnan, I trust you can keep busy without him for a few minutes."

D'Artagnan caught her slightly panicked look with his grim one. It was never good when Duval wanted a private audience, but there was little reason to wonder why she of all people should be worried.

"I don't have all day, and neither do you," Duval reminded her.

Jacqueline gave a barely perceptible smile to D'Artagnan, trying to tell him not to worry. With a deep breath, she went to catch up with Duval. D'Artagnan watched them go. Nothing was more frustrating than unrequited love, except for constantly worrying that your unrequited love could at any moment be exposed as a cross-dressing fugitive from the law.

The captain and the recruit walked quietly through the gardens for what seemed a long time to Jacqueline. Quickly, she ran through the last few days in her mind, trying to remember any time someone might have discovered her secret. Had she locked her bedroom door? Yes, always. Had she been followed to the public bath house? Not unless they'd also followed her through the market, around the forest, past the church, and under the bridge. Had she hidden the linens she used to keep herself in..? She couldn't remember. But there were many explanations for having extra linens around, weren't there?

Duval cleared his throat.

"How is your wound, LePonte?"

Jacqueline blinked. "My wound?"

"Does it ever give you trouble?"

This was odd. It had been nearly a year since she'd been wounded in the fight that saw the deaths of both Bernard and Gerard, and he hadn't brought it up since she'd returned to duty.

"No, Sir. Siroc saw that it healed well."

Duval nodded. Jacqueline noted that he was looking more and more uneasy, as though he were about to admit a transgression to his mother.

"And... your brother? Gerard, was it?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Are you... coping?"

Jacqueline's frown deepened. "Coping, Sir?"

Duval made a frustrated noise. Though she wasn't quite sure what he was getting at, she knew he'd rather be talking about some horrific battle or oral surgery gone awry.

"I'm not asking for details. The less I know, the more truthful I can be when Mazarin comes up with new questions about the whole thing. He did lose his guard captain in the affair, after all."

"So you've said, Captain."

Duval stopped walking and faced her. "LePonte, I know you've been sneaking in extra practice with D'Artagnan in the early mornings. I've let it go on so far because I thought you needed to blow off some steam, not to mention that it's good for that ego of his. But it's been months now, and you're still at him every single day. You're also spending an awful lot of time away from the garrison."

"By your leave, Sir. I've been at church. Is it against regulations to pray for my murdered brother?"

"Mind your tone, recruit."

Jacqueline took a slow breath, remembering whom she was talking to and checking her temper.

"Sir, if you need me for extra duty, I'll gladly give my spare time for it."

"It's not that. I've seen it happen before: Young soldiers who think they've seen it all. Something terrible happens one day and they start to withdraw. They escape their pain in extra training. Then at the worst possible moment, they break down and usually get themselves and a comrade or two killed."

Relief washed over Jacqueline. This wasn't about her secret at all. In his way, the man was trying to say he was concerned.

"Sir, I swear to you I'm fine. I just miss my brother and I want to make sure he didn't die for nothing. If that means I have to train every spare moment, then that's what I'll do."

Duval seemed to consider that and for a moment. Jacqueline thought she saw a smile tug at his mouth. He nodded.

"Lay off the man for a few days. I don't want to have to explain all the extra bruises to his father when he goes home on furlough."

"I'll try to remember, Sir."

"Ah, my dear Captain Duval. And musketeer LePonte as well, what an unexpected pleasure. Not talking about me, I trust?"

Jacqueline and Duval bowed to Cardinal Mazarin as he walked leisurely from one of the wings into the yard. He was smiling that little smile of his, the one that reminded everyone who saw it of a cat with a bird still wiggling in its mouth.

"Your Eminence," Duval greeted him. "You're out early today. I hope we weren't disturbing you."

"Not at all. I am curious, though: Is this a new musketeer training exercise? 'Talk the enemy to death'?"

Duval coughed.

"I had my drills already this morning, Your Eminence," Jacqueline put in. "The captain and I were just discussing strategy."

"Recruit, I'm sure the cardinal isn't interested," Duval said.

"Nonsense. I've always found military matters a passable diversion, although I do confess it's turned into a bit of a bore since it's become work. That unpleasantness with Bernard, you remember."

_How could we forget? You keep reminding us_.

"My new captain seems to be fitting in nicely, though," Mazarin went on. "Three weeks on the job and already he's completely reworked the drilling schedule for my men."

"Yes, I noticed."

"Oh, I hope we haven't put your recruits out too much, my dear captain. I realize the schedules for the guard and the musketeers overlapped a bit at first. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your understanding that my men do need to keep their skills honed for holy mother church."

Actually, the schedules had overlapped completely. The musketeers had been bullied out of their regimen as the guard took over the training areas and forced to train in the meadow until a new schedule could be worked. Duval, wanting to keep the peace rather than spend everyone's energy on a pissing contest when they needed to protect the king, kept his poise and fumed about the whole thing only during five a.m. practice.

"I haven't had the pleasure of meeting your new captain yet, Your Eminence. Gilbert, isn't it?" Duval said, forcing a smile.

"Yes. I must introduce him to you at the first opportunity. Fine young man from the coast, a second lieutenant on one of His Majesty's frigates. A very rare find indeed. Although, I'm sure you could give him some valuable information about how things were done in the old days."

Jacqueline had never wanted to be pope so much in all her life. Anything to shove those petty little barbs down Mazarin's throat. As usual however, Duval was diplomatic.

"If it pleases His Majesty, I'd be happy to."

Mazarin's smile widened and he turned to Jacqueline. "Monsieur LePonte. I trust this morning finds you well."

Jacqueline bowed again. "Thank you, Your Eminence."

"I trust also that you would like to meet my new captain. The two of you have so much in common, you know."

"I actually don't, I'm afraid."

"Well for starters, I look at either one of you and I immediately think of one man. Of course you just have to look at that new scar of yours, don't you?"

It was Duval who broke their staring contest, his voice tight.

"And I look forward to hearing what lessons your new captain learned from his predecessor."

Jacqueline looked at him, surprised. His eyes were sparkling with barely contained anger. Insult him and he remain as cool as morning mist. Insult one of his recruits, his work, and he wasn't having it.

"Sir, it's really -"

"LePonte, I was merely suggesting an exchange of information. I'm sure it would be to everyone's benefit, and we are all on the same side after all."

"Sir," Jacqueline whispered urgently, "you are speaking to a cardinal!"

"Don't worry, son. I'm sure the cardinal can speak for himself."

But when they looked back at Mazarin, he wasn't speaking at all. Actually, he looked frozen, his face strangely drained of color as he stared at Jacqueline. Not at her face, but at her throat.

"Your Eminence?" Duval tried.

Mazarin blinked up at him. "Huh? Oh, forgive me. I just never noticed Monsieur's crucifix before. Is it new?"

Jacqueline glanced down and saw that the cross had worked its way free of her shirt. She quickly tucked it back in.

"Uh... No, Your Eminence. It's kind of an heirloom."

"'Kind of'?"

"Yes, it belonged to my brother."

"I see. And your brother got it from..?"

"From our father," Jacqueline said, feeling more uneasy by the moment. Of all the people in the world she didn't want interested in her affairs, especially this one, Mazarin was at the top of the list.

"Fascinating. I've never seen one quite like it before. Did you know I make a hobby of studying antique religious paraphernalia? If it wouldn't put you out, I'd love to study it some time."

"Your Eminence, it's just a family gift. I can't imagine it's worth your time," Jacqueline said humbly.

Something flashed in Mazarin's eyes before he forced a laugh from his throat.

"Of course. Another time, perhaps. Captain. Monsieur."

Duval and Jacqueline bowed as he glided off toward his apartments. When he was safely out of earshot, Duval looked at his charge.

"What was that all about?"

"I don't know, Sir," said Jacqueline, still frowning after the cardinal.

"Humph. Well if I were you, I'd keep an eye on that thing. Unless it's attached to you, it's liable to disappear. I swear, that man looks more like a jackal every day. Come on, now. The mantandre-chappelle waits for no man."

Mazarin sat in his study, quietly cracking his knuckles one by one. It was almost noon now and he had spent the past several hours here, ensconced in his overstuffed chair, trying to recover from the shock of the day.

Jacques LePonte. Mazarin had barely noticed him before Bernard died. Musketeers on the whole were hardly worth his time, especially brand new ones. How the hell had that boy ever been landed with..?

Of course, from the little he knew of LePonte, Mazarin was quite sure it would be unwise to underestimate him. After all, he had been one of the biggest thorns in Mazarin's side since his arrival at the academy, and his talent as a soldier was unmistakable. If it hadn't so obviously been a lost cause, Mazarin might have tried to recruit him into the guard. But no, like his comrades, LePonte was fiercely loyal to Duval and his ridiculous code.

Misplaced loyalty. That, thought Mazarin, was one of the world's great tragedies.

The door opened and a footman announced Captain Gilbert, breaking the cardinal out of his brooding. Mazarin straightened up as the young man entered to stand before the gleaming mahogany desk and bow.

"You sent for me, Your Eminence."

Mazarin smiled at his new guard captain. Bernard had had his useful moments, but he'd always been a fop at heart. Gilbert was a dream come true. At twenty-seven, he'd already carved a reputation for himself out of the Spanish fleet, a testament punctuated by the collection of scars that decorated his face and bald head. At six and a half feet tall and at least fifteen stone in weight, he was like a walking flagship. Best of all, he was a devout Catholic, and Mazarin practically had to beat him away with a stick to keep him from kissing the hem of his robes all the time.

"Yes, Captain Gilbert. I have a special assignment for you. Do you know Musketeer LePonte?"

"I know of him, Your Eminence."

Mazarin nodded. "Tomorrow morning, I shall have a special assignment for him. And God shall have a special assignment for you."

TBC...

Thanks for reading, folks. Please let me know if you have anything nice/constructive to say, and I'll get the next bit up soon.


	2. The Order

Thanks for the reviews, kids! I love you as the sun loves the flower.

And now, the next cliffy... I mean installment.

Thunder echoed over the distant hills and Jacqueline sighed, knowing the rain would hit long before she made it back to the garrison. Fairlight, the white mare she was riding down the forest trail, made a disgruntled noise. Jacqueline couldn't blame her, but at least the thick trees might provide some protection with their branches. The autumn leaves were just beginning to turn, and randomly rained down on the path before her.

She checked the pouch on her saddle that contained the documents she was to deliver this morning, making sure the leather covered them. She could hear Mazarin now: What use were the musketeers in defending the king in times of war if they couldn't be trusted with so simple an errand as seeing a letter through the rain? One could also wonder why a musketeer was being utilized as the cardinal's page when there was an entire guard for that function, but that wasn't for a recruit to question, at least not out loud.

Not that she minded this rare moment of solitude. It gave her time to think without Ramon's poetry recitations or Siroc's tinkering or D'Artagnon's flirting to distract her. The only problem was that whenever she got time to think, her head just worked in the same limited circle of facts that always led to a dead end. And from there, all she could do was miss Gerard.

She pulled the cross from her shirt and looked at it for the thousandth time. Small, silver, pretty but plain. It seemed a rather unfair trade for the life of such a brave man. How did something so insignificant manage to reach across oceans? And why would anyone use his last breath to beg her forgiveness, especially a missionary in Nova Scotia?

She didn't know, and after almost a year of searching for answers, she felt even more lost than she had before.

Yes, she had prayed for Gerard. The bulk of her time in the church however had been spent buried in the friar's library, digging through every volume with the remote chance of bearing information on the crucifix. She'd learned a lot of little-known facts about every one of the saints, but nothing particularly helpful.

Then there was Mazarin. The look on his face when he saw the cross yesterday morning was still there when she closed her eyes, making her shiver. If he hadn't had an eye on her before, she had a feeling he was going to now. That was definitely bad news.

Well. Nobody had ever said that taking on the law and disguising herself as a man was going to be easy. At least it promised never to be boring.

Jacqueline's thought process was interrupted when Fairlight suddenly halted on the path and began to fuss, kicking up the dirt and twisting her head this way and that. Jacqueline fought to stay astride.

"Whoa, whoa, sshhh..." she soothed, stroking the mare's neck until she calmed down a little."What's gotten into you? Come on. We'll be home in no time."

But Fairlight wouldn't go forward. Something was stopping the well-trained horse from obeying her mistress. Something was there.

Alarms began to clang in Jacqueline's head and out came her rapier.

"Come out," she called. "I know you're there. Come out and show yourself!"

Obligingly, a figure stepped out from the cover of trees at her left to stand on the path some twenty paces before her. He was tall and broad-shouldered enough that she was quite sure it was a man, for all that his face was largely hidden by the hood of a long black cloak.

The figure spoke in a deep bass that seemed to echo, even out in the woods.

"You're a long way from your garrison, Musketeer."

"And you're a long way from anywhere on foot," Jacqueline countered.

"Yes. How foolish of me, out among the highwaymen. A person could get into real trouble out here, and no one would know for days."

The subtle threat wasn't lost on Jacqueline. She shifted her sword to a guard position.

"I have business to attend to. What do you want?"

"Your crucifix, the silver one you wear about your neck. Give it to me and we can avoid a lot of unpleasantness."

Jacqueline's free hand instinctively went to the spot on her chest where the familiar weight of her cross rested. What the hell was going on?

"I have a better idea. You decide that was just a bad joke and I'll forgo charging you with threatening a musketeer."

The wide shoulders lifted in shrug. "In that case, I must ask: Are you really that good, that you're out in the most secluded pass in the forest by yourself?"

"I'm not by myself," Jacqueline bluffed. "My patrol mate is just behind me. He'll be here any minute."

"No he's not. But mine are."

There was a flash of movement at Jacqueline's side and she reacted just quickly enough to block the attack of a masked man with a knife. Recognition flashed through her mind at the metallic façade.

The secret order!

She knocked the weapon from his hand and slashed his throat in the same move, leaving him to crumple to the ground.

No sooner had he died than two more masked men rushed at her from the trees, one grabbing for the mare's bit and the other slashing at her with a cutlass. She could tell he'd had a little training, but it wasn't enough compared to hers. She avoided his blade, letting him over-swing and find himself bent over the business edge of her sword. A quick tug and he was gutted, leaving her free to dispatch the other man as his hands were full with the very agitated Fairlight.

The next thing Jacqueline knew she was on the ground with another man on her back, having been knocked from the saddle when he dropped out of a tree. Somehow she managed to hang onto her sword, and as the man struggled to disarm her, she brought her leg up like the tail of a scorpion, landing her foot hard in his groin. He choked in pain and rolled helplessly off her.

Jacqueline twisted up to her knees just in time to block the thrust of yet another masked thug, who had appeared from the trees along with four others. She side-stepped and parried as he charged like a bull, leaving him to impale himself on the sword of the man behind her.

With her breath now coming in ragged gasps, she shook the sweat out of her eyes and rushed to the edge of the path to face the remaining men. They were wisely avoiding the bonsai-charge strategy of their hapless companions, choosing instead to slowly spread to the edges of her vision field. Her eyes flicked from one to the next. If she didn't move quickly, they would surround her and attack from her blind sides.

She feinted left and lunged right, engaging one man's blade as she kicked out behind her at another. She connected with his midsection, winding him. Twisting her blade free, she slashed at the starboard man's face and opened a decent cut from temple to chin. She turned just in time to find the last man flying at her like a pouncing cheetah and managed to clock him in the jaw with the knuckle guard of her rapier. He fell to the ground at her feet, stunned. She spun to meet the next attack and found herself faced with the eye of a discharging pistol.

She felt the impact of the bullet before she heard the shot. It took her full in the left shoulder, knocking her backwards off her feet to land hard on her back, her rapier bouncing out of her hand.

Half deaf from the blast, she fought for breath as the impact echoed through her lungs and the immediate numbness in her shoulder slowly gave way to a pulsating burn. Through the black spots in her vision, she watched the hooded man tuck the smoking gun into his cloak. He then began to advance on her with all the ease of a man bellying up to a bar for a drink, the remaining three of his men just cursing their way to their feet as he passed by.

_Get up, Musketeer!_ Jacqueline's mind screamed at her. _Get your sword and get up!_

Her rapier lay just out of reach. She stretched her right hand toward it, but the wound seemed to anchor her in place, as if she were staked through the shoulder to the ground. The men loomed, and all she could see of the hooded man's face was a smile full of broken teeth.

He reached for her.

A shadow fell over them all, making the hooded man freeze and frown up at the sky just in time to see the object that was falling out of the tree above Jacqueline. Several things seemed to happen at once then - The hooded man falling on his butt and sporting a bleeding mouth, having been hit by the object on its way down, the object landing in a protective barrier over Jacqueline, and the object turning out to be a person.

It was difficult to tell much more than that, being said person was largely concealed by a pine-colored cloak. Also, he moved so fast that the nearest masked man was on the ground before he knew what had put him there.

The green cloak landed nimbly from the jump-kick, spun, and jammed a hand into another enemy's throat, crushing his windpipe. Ducking the swipe of a blade, he lashed out a leg in a sweep. The second brute felt his legs disappear and went crashing to the ground. Very shortly after that, his nose caved in under a sharp elbow.

The fighter sprang back up into a wide grounded stance, small hands up in a guard. The last masked man hung back, holding his sword like a lion-tamer warding off a beast with a chair. The fighter waited steadily until he attacked, then spun inside the reach of the sword. With the thug's sword arm clamped against his side, the fighter kneed him in the belly. The man gasped and hunched, only to meet the same knee in the face. He dropped and didn't move.

Again the fighter turned to meet the next attack, but found the hooded man fleeing down the path.

Jacqueline blinked clouds from her vision. Rather than giving chase, the green figure stood and watched the man run, shoulders rising and falling from the exercise. When he turned to Jacqueline, the face lay completely in shadow and grayness was starting to eat at the edges of her vision. Distantly, she could feel her own warm blood beginning to soak through her jacket and stain the earth. She was also shivering, and not from fear. Her rational self tried to penetrate the building dizziness and fog, reminding her that the newcomer was most likely a bandit who would turn on her next. However, it seemed to be taking all of her waning strength just to stay conscious, much less get up and fight someone who'd just taken out three bigger men in the blink of an eye. She could only lie there as the shadow approached and crouched over her, blocking the rain as it began to fall.

A slender hand reached for her, froze, and then gingerly lifted her cross free of her shirt. There was a moment when nothing more happened, Jacqueline searching the void beyond the hood where a face should be, and the fighter seeming to stiffen at the sight of the cross.

The moment ended when the hand snapped back, breaking the cross's chain. In a similar move, he tugged the false beard from Jacqueline's chin.

The darkness reached up to claim her, and Jacqueline tumbled into it, falling away from the figure, away from the forest, away from her cross.

TBC...

I know this one was short, but I hope you liked it. See you again soon.


	3. Rain

It was just past noon when Mimou bounced out of the horse-drawn cart before it had come to a full stop.

"Uncle Martin!" she sang as she quickly splashed across the cobble stones of the market.

Duval grinned and stooped to catch her in a hug, her sodden traveling coat hitting his with a wet smack. Marie had sent word last week that she would make it up to him ten fold in Christmas presents if he'd watch Mimou and Andre for another few days while she caught up on housework and sleep. Frankly, he was surprised Marie was entrusting him with her children again after what had happened on their last visit, but that was overshadowed by the idea of what living with the two hellions all the time would be like.

"Hello, my little musketeer. _Mon Diu_, look at you! You're going to be taller than I am by next week."

"Uncle, I'm only half an inch taller than I was the last time you saw me. Can we see the garrison again? And the armory? And the horses? And -"

"Whoa, whoa! Let's get you settled and have some lunch and _then_ we'll see about a tour. Where's your brother?"

Mimou turned back to the cart and yelled. "Andre, come _on_! I want to see the courtyard before the musketeers go off duty!"

The yellow-haired boy yawned and rolled out of the cart, dragging his feet up to his big sister.

"Uncle, I'm hungry. Can we please go to the café?"

"But it's already half past noon! We're wasting daylight," protested Mimou.

Andre gave her a dubious look. "Wasting daylight by eating more than once in sixteen hours?"

"We can eat anytime. When else can we see the musketeer garrison?"

"In our dreams, hopefully in a nice soft bed," said Andre.

"You never want to do anything. What if I miss Monsieur LePonte? He said he'd give me another lesson."

"Now you two, there will be plenty of time for lessons this afternoon," Duval said diplomatically.

"But Monsieur LePonte -"

"- Will still be there later." Duval gave Mimou a mischievous look. "You seem rather attached to him. You do realize he's too old for you."

Andre snickered as Mimou's jaw fell to the cobble stones.

"Uncle! I'm not..." Mimou caught herself just in time. Thinking quickly, she cleared her throat. "Maybe he'll wait for me. Did you ever think of that?"

"Captain!"

Duval was saved from being one-upped by a 12-year-old when D'Artagnan came jogging up to them. He looked a little distressed, as though he'd misplaced a love note from a married woman.

"Private? What's the matter?"

"I was just wondering if you'd seen Jacques."

"He's on an errand for the cardinal. Why?"

"Because he left at dawn and it's barely a four-hour round trip to the post. It's not like him to take the scenic route."

"Jacques's missing?" said Mimou.

"He's not missing," Duval assured her. "D'Artagnan, Jacques is a grown man and it's not for me to supervise his off-duty hours."

"How do you know he's not missing? I was missing and no one knew about it until the next morning," Andre reasoned.

"Don't you start too, young man."

"Sir, I just think we should -"

"_We_ should be out on patrol, shouldn't we musketeer? He probably just took shelter to wait out the rain. If he's still not back when you go off duty, you can look for him then."

Reluctantly, D'Artagnan nodded.

"Good. Come on, children, before our shoes get flooded."

D'Artagnan sighed and watched the captain go, Andre trotting through the puddles in his wake. Maybe Duval was right; maybe he was just being overprotective. As many times as he tried to tell himself that however, the uncomfortable knot in his stomach just seemed to tighten. Well, the beginning leg of his patrol was also the beginning of Jacqueline's route. Until he could offer Duval a better reason to worry, all he could do was keep his eyes open.

He turned back toward the stables and almost tripped over Mimou. She stood frowning unabashedly up at him through the rain.

"Hello," he said, trying to sound cheerful. "Mimou, isn't it?"

"Is Jacques in trouble?" the girl demanded.

"No! No, I just wanted to find out where he was so that I could, er, ask to borrow his doublet. I need it. His doublet. For a date. I need to borrow his doublet for a date with a young lady. Tonight."

"Then why do you look so worried? You look like my uncle did when Andre went missing."

D'Artagnan blinked. He tried to think of another lie, but another look at Mimou told him it wouldn't be worth it.

"Listen: I don't think Jacques's in trouble. Not really. But on the off chance, and I stress the word OFF that he _is_ in trouble, would you mind keeping an eye out?"

"I could go look for him," Mimou said eagerly. "I don't have to go on patrol."

"Are you mad? Your uncle will have me killed if I let you go off by yourself in this weather. Just watch for Jacques. And if you think of it, watch the cardinal's guards and see if they look overly gleeful."

"Mimou!"

"I'm coming, Uncle!" Mimou looked back to D'Artagnan. "I'll watch. And if you go out looking, I want to come. Promise?"

"Okay, okay. Now go on before you float away."

D'Artagnan watched Mimou jog to catch up with her brother and uncle and couldn't help feeling a little relieved. She may be a little girl, but at least he wasn't alone.

Mazarin drummed his fingers together as he stared silently at the hulk before his desk. The captain looked shaken and disheveled, his coat dusty and a dark bruise forming under his left eye. His mouth had finally stopped bleeding, but that did little to improve his appearance. He'd looked increasingly nervous through his report of the morning's events, watching as the cardinal looked more and more like a glowering statue. Gilbert swallowed hard. He wasn't an expert in body language, but he knew his master was not pleased.

"Let me just make sure I understand all of this," Mazarin said darkly. "You and no less than eight of your men were beaten by a single musketeer? The smallest musketeer in the garrison?"

"He had help, Your Eminence."

"Ah, yes: The highwayman."

"I've never seen the like, Your Eminence. He had now weapons and fought like a demon."

"And yet you survived. Are you making excuses?" Mazarin growled.

Eyes wide, Gilbert shook his head. "N-No, Your Eminence."

"I hope you can appreciate how disappointing this is, Captain Gilbert. Here I was beginning to think so highly of you, and you couldn't bring me one tiny holy cross. I never thought you were the sort of man to accept failure before death."

"But Your Eminence, I wounded LePonte soundly. He'll be easy to find, I'm sure of it."

Mazarin sprang from behind his desk and backhanded Gilbert across the face.

"Idiot! That bandit probably has it now. He'll have disappeared into the forest like smoke, and then it'll wind up on some gypsy's wagon full of unholy trinkets! And if Duval finds that boy dead, he'll make someone answer for it. By God, that's not going to be me!"

With the big man now cowering properly, Mazarin sighed and took Gilbert's face gently in both hands.

"Even now it's not too late. You know this."

"Yes, Your Eminence," Gilbert whispered.

"Go with God's forgiveness. Find your redemption before it's too late or spend the rest of your life trying."

Gilbert bowed and hurried from the room. Mazarin went to the window, where the rain was running down the glass in delicate streams. He fought not to put his fist through it in his frustration.

It sickened him to think of the Cross of Santou in the hands of such an unworthy bearer. If Gilbert dared to come back without it again, it would be by the grace of God alone that he befell some horrible accident before Mazarin found him.

A thunderclap jerked Jacqueline back to consciousness, though she couldn't remember passing out. Rather, she remembered having every reason to stay awake. That didn't change the fact that she felt so weak, she wasn't even sure she could open her eyes. For the moment, she concentrated on sensations: A deep ache in her shoulder, a firm surface under her, warmth to one side, coolness to the other, a light mist on her face. Very nearby, a hard rain fell.

When she did manage to open her eyes through a sheer effort of will and urgency, she found herself staring at a low ceiling of rough rock. She was up against a concave section of rock face, sheltered by an overhang that reached out some six feet. Under her was a cushion of moss and soft dirt. To her left, a small fire crackled in the shelter. Glancing down at herself, she found her shoulder wrapped snugly in strips of rough, bloody linen. She was also covered to the shoulders by a green cloak.

Well. Whoever the stranger with the mean right hook had been, he apparently didn't want her dead, at least not yet. That was something at least.

With an exhausting effort, she managed to turn her head toward to open air. There, through the heavy rain some thirty paces down the sloping ground, stood a figure.

She, for the curves were unmistakable despite the fact that her back was turned, was nude from the waist up and barefoot. The black trousers she wore were plastered to her skin with the rain, as was her short red hair. She stood before the tree line, arms out, head back and eyes closed, as though she were trying to embrace the rain itself.

The rain rinsed dried blood from her arms and hands, and ran down her muscled back in rivers made crooked by the blue design tattooed across her shoulders. Extending to engulf the left upper arm, it was intricate and strangely beautiful, even from a distance. Jacqueline had never seen anything like it.

Slowly, the ghost lowered her arms and the tattoo settled like folding wings. Then, as if sensing Jacqueline's eyes on her, she turned her head to look back toward the rock face. The moment was brief, when the pair of stony green eyes pierced the curtain of rain and met Jacqueline's like a magnet to a pin.

Brief, and silent, and Jacqueline fell again into the long dark well.


	4. Marjorie

Jacqueline was darkly aware that the rain had let up to a mist, and of hanging upside-down as the muddy ground passed before her eyes. She was lucid just long enough to deduce that she was being carried, slung over a slender pair of shoulders like a sack of grain. Then she lost the world again.

She was cold, though she was sweating. She was also lying flat on a forgiving surface. There was light, but not much, and all sounds and images were muted and blurry, as though she were under water. Deft, firm hands were doing something very rude to her shoulder. She tried to move and the pain blazed, knocking her down again.

She was hot, burning up and trying to tear all the coverings from her body. Someone was running a damp cloth over her face and neck in steady, rhythmic strokes, but the water seemed to turn to steam the moment it touched her skin.

_Hold her down_.

Strong hands that seemed oddly small pinned her upper arms. A glowing red object floated through the darkness toward her, toward her shoulder.

Searing agony erupted in her wound, and that was the only time she screamed.

_It's all right..._

She was so cold that her jaw ached from chattering. An arm slid under her bare shoulders and levered her up while a cup was held to her lips and a very bitter liquid poured into her mouth.

_More. It'll help. Come on._

With little recourse, she swallowed some more.

She was hot again, though not as much. It didn't take long to realize that the strange raspy sound she heard was her own breathing. The cool cloth was there again on her face, and there was also a pretty alto humming a tune in a gently minor key. She opened her eyes to the murky gloom and the song stopped.

_Mademoiselle, can you hear me?_

"Yes..."

_Your wound is infected and you've got a high fever. The medicine will help, but you're going to be very sick in the meantime. Do you understand?_

Jacqueline wanted to say that no, she didn't understand, and would somebody please explain what the hell was going on before she lost the question?

Unfortunately, she didn't have the time.

Marjorie DeGhent twisted her mouth as the girl in her bed sighed and fell unconscious again. The lucid moments were encouraging, but the fever had raged for three days and Marjorie was beginning to worry that the infection may have spread to her lungs. Maybe the girl remained so sick as a sort of revenge for the willow bark tea. It may have lowered the fever out of the danger zone, but Marjorie knew from experience that the taste was almost bad enough to make one wish for death. Perhaps the girl could take heart in the fact that Marjorie was almost out of every herb in her pantry, and if the storm didn't let up enough for a trip to the village soon, there would be no more medicines or poultices.

Of course she was being silly. Thirty years of ministering to soldiers at her husband's side had taught her that battlefield fever was a fierce enemy, especially when the body was weakened by such blood loss, and there was no reason to jump to conclusions. Perhaps it was that damn Goddaughter of hers and her cryptic messages working up her nerves so. Honestly, she would've thought her mother would teach her a thing or two about breaking down an old woman's door and then presenting her with such a time-consuming project. She's been shot, Madge. There's no time, Madge. She must survive, Madge. I can't stay, Madge; it's a complicated matter. Sure, ma petite. May I fix you a soufflé as long as I'm not busy?

Not that it mattered. She wasn't the sort to ask questions rather than act. But for God's sakes, three days was a long time and she'd barely managed a few moments to milk her poor cow.

Rubbing her tired eyes, she tucked the blankets more firmly around the shivering girl's body and pulled back the edge of the bandages about her shoulder. Her stitches were holding, and the angry red flesh about the wound was no longer so hot to the touch. Marjorie allowed herself a smile and replaced the old garlic poultice with a fresh one. That would be the last one if the storm didn't stop.

A bolt of thunder sounded and the shutters over the window in the door burst open with the pounding wind and rain. Marjorie set down the basin of water she'd been using to sponge the girl's face and stood, crossing to the door and muttering about cheap excuses for hardware. When she was about to close the shutters however, she happened to look down at the stoop, where a small burlap sack sat alone.

Frowning, she retrieved the sack and peered inside. There were heads of garlic, willow bark, packets of cobwebs, limes, comfrey, even a small bottle of rum.

She looked up through the window, where a flash of lightening lit the meadow between the cottage and the woods. Just disappearing into the trees was a thin figure in a green cloak.

"Ma petite," she said with a grudging smile. "Now if I could just get you to come in out of the rain."

Duval shut the door against the gale and hung up his sodden coat and hat before entering the garrison common room. One look at the two men who stood huddled by the fireplace told him they'd had about as much luck as he had, but he asked anyway.

"Anything?"

Siroc shook his head. "Nothing, Captain."

"Me neither," said Ramon. "We must've been over every inch of that trail a dozen times. I'll be scrubbing mud off my boots for a month. So help me, if Jacques turns out to have run off with some senorita -"

"If only I could believe that idea," Duval said wearily, coming to stand with them in the glow of the fire. "Something tells me Jacques's not the type."

"I get that feeling too," said Siroc.

"Huh?"

"I said I hope he's all right. Maybe the horse threw him and he had to wait out the storm."

Ramon scoffed at Siroc. "Fairlight? She'd sooner take him out to dinner."

"I'm afraid I'm inclined to agree. That leaves foul play, but who'd want to hurt Jacques?"

Ramon and Siroc exchanged a look. There was the secret order, for one. And the cardinal's entire guard. And any one of the young ladies whose affections Jacques had shrugged off.

"Well, there's D'Artagnan," said Ramon.

"D'Artagnan?"

"Si. It was Jacques who stole the fishmonger's daughter from him, and not even on purpose if I understand it."

"Where is D'Artagnan? I haven't seen him since we broke up to search this morning."

"Still out," said Siroc.

"What? I told him to be back by seven o'clock. It's almost nine! He's going to get lost in the dark and the last thing I need is another missing musketeer."

_Especially since we might've found Jacques by now if I'd just listened to D'Artagnan when he first disappeared._

The unspoken sentiment rang loud and clear over the drumming of the rain on the windows. Since Fairlight had returned three evenings ago without her rider, Duval had relieved Jacques's squad mates of their regular duties in order to let them devote themselves to the search. Since, D'Artagnan could scarcely be seen around the garrison.

Speak of the devil. The door opened and D'Artagnan entered, leaving a trail of rain water on his way to the huddle. Duval glared at him, but didn't scold.

"Any luck?" D'Artagnan asked through his clacking teeth.

"Nothing," said Duval.

D'Artagnan nodded. "As soon as I warm up, I'll head back out."

"No you won't. Look at you: You're half frozen and you've barely eaten in days."

"Captain, I -"

"D'Artagnan, I'm not going to let you go wandering around in the dark in the middle of a storm. You can set out again at first light. Until then, you're all restricted to the garrison. Get some food, and for God's sake get some sleep."

Duval limped off toward his room, not noticing the little shadow crouched behind a table in the hallway as he passed by. Mimou watched D'Artagnan shed his sodden coat and angrily throw it into a corner.

"Three days, guys. If Duval thinks I look bad after one night out in that, what's Jacques going through after three days?"

"It doesn't matter, Companero. He's right: We'd just get lost in the dark. I hate sitting on my hands too, but it's not going to help Jacques if we do something stupid."

Mimou unfortunately missed Ramon's rare bout of reasoning. Unnoticed by all, her movements muted by the noise of the storm, she slipped out to the stables.

Badger huddled in the shelter of the willow tree, its thick hanging branches shielding her as effectively as a thatch roof. She wished she'd been able to find more fuel for her fire, but it would never last the night if she built it up higher. Moreover, she wished she were indoors with the civilized people. Despite her upbringing, she really did prefer that to hiding al fresco. Fireplaces, stoves, teakettles, nice big beds. All were things she coveted, especially at the moment.

She growled and held her numb hands near the fire. She was really starting to hate it here. She hated the goofy little mustaches, she hated the strange obsession everyone had with wine, she hated the double-cheek kiss. That was just creepy. The weather in France was no better than the weather back home. And if she were back home, she certainly wouldn't be hiding out in the woods or slinking around like a criminal, or scrubbing blood stains out of her cloak, or getting into fights with the Knights of the Black Tabernacle...

Or finding the Cross of Asher at last. Badger sighed. Her mother was right: She should've just joined the convent.

She was just trying to remember what in the Gods' names had possessed her to come to this backwards country in the first place when she heard a horse's bray beyond the shelter of the branches. Groaning, Badger took a branch from her fire to use as a torch and stuck her head out of the leafy curtain.

The pony that was fleeing down the trail almost ran her over. When it saw her, it slid to a halt in the mud and reared up on its hind legs, pawing the air and shaking its head around in obvious distress.

"Whoa, whoa lad," Badger said, staying out of striking distance until she was able to grab the pony's bit and weigh him back down to the ground. She stroked his nose and waited for him to calm.

The pony's saddle was empty. Judging from the size of the animal, there was a very small person somewhere who was missing a mount. Bloody hell.

She put up the hood of her cloak again and towed the pony back down the trail the way it had come. For his part, the pony wasn't overly difficult, though he did take some coaxing to walk through the bigger puddles. It wasn't long before she heard a high soprano voice calling through the night.

"Jacques! Jacques, where are you? Jacques!"

Badger waved her torch into the shadows along the trail. There in a patch of brambles was a little girl, fighting to free herself from the thorny branches that were hopelessly entangled in her clothes. Gods, did anyone in this blessed country know how to stay out of trouble?

A branch snapped under Badger's foot as she approached and the girl froze, blinking up at her through a curtain of wet bangs.

"Hello," said Badger.

"Identify yourself, in the name of the musketeers!" the girl shouted.

"The what? What are you doing out here by yourself?"

The girl hesitated, then seemed to conclude that she was in no position to make demands.

"I'm on musketeer business. It's very important."

"Is that right. And you wouldn't happen to know who belongs to this fellow?"

Badger held up the reins she was holding and the girl scowled at the pony.

"He got spooked by the thunder and threw me. Some war horse you are!"

Badger shook her head and stooped to pull the girl free of the brambles, careful not to let them scratch her.

"Thank... you," said the girl, her voice trailing off as she caught sight of Badger's face in the torchlight. "Is that real?"

Badger pulled her hood forward so that it hid her features. At least this girl was looking at her with fascination rather than terror as she was accustomed.

"Come on," she sighed. "I'll see you back home."

"But I can't go home! I have to find my friend. He's been missing for almost four days!"

"Four days?" Badger said thoughtfully. "Little one, this may seem a strange question, but would you happen to know what a dar-tan-yin is?"

"Everyone knows D'Artagnan. He's back at the garrison in town. And I'm not little, I'm twelve. But what's that got to do with anything?"

"He wouldn't happen to be a friend of this friend of yours?"

The girl narrowed her eyes at Badger. "Did you hurt him? If you did, I'll -"

"'Him'..? Of course. I mean, of course not. Now could you point me at this D'Artagnan fellow? I think it would be helpful to us both."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

The girl chewed her lip. "Because I got lost half an hour ago."

Badger was glad the hood concealed her eye-roll. Nothing came easy, did it?

"It'll be dawn in a little while. Let's get out of the rain until then and we'll follow the pony home."

The girl hesitated.

"I've got apples and roasted rabbit," Badger added.

"Well, all right. But if you try to kidnap me, I'll kick you in the shins until you can't walk."

"That sounds fair."

Badger held the wing of her cloak over the girl's head to shield her from the rain and they headed back toward the willow.

The rain had finally stopped by the time Mazarin rose to dress for morning mass. He hadn't slept well, nor had he slept well for the last three nights. This left him cross all day as the different ways to murder Gilbert for his failure swirled behind his forced smile.

There was a light tap on the door.

"Enter."

Philippe, the cardinal's valet scurried into the room with an armful of newly laundered vestment.

"You're late again. Is your rooster on vacation?"

"Forgive me, Your Eminence. The baby has been giving my wife trouble and when the wife has trouble, the husband has trouble and -"

"Philippe, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not interested?" Mazarin stood with his arms up and Philippe climbed up on a footstool to pull off the cardinal's dressing gown. "Any news?"

"Nothing new, Your Eminence. Gilbert still hasn't returned and LePonte is still missing."

"Of course they are. Why shouldn't they be?" Mazarin shrugged into the robe as Philippe lowered it over his head. "Philippe, how much time do we have until the new moon?"

"Eleven days, I think," Philippe said, doing up buttons.

"Then I think we should come up with a back-up plan in case Gilbert doesn't come through, which is looking more likely by the hour. Don't you agree?"

"Your Eminence?"

Mazarin's eyes bore into Philippe's and he lowered his voice to a rumbling whisper.

"Get a message to the knights that I wish to address them tonight at sundown. We have much to discuss."

Philippe's rat-like smile spread across his pock-marked face. How he loved his job.


	5. Wolves

It was still dark when Marjorie built up the fire again. She was stiff from sleeping in her easy chair for the fourth night in a row, tired from waking up every hour to check on the girl in her bed, and irritated from the constant smell of bitter herbs in her little house. What was the point of growing old if you couldn't sit around and complain about rheumatism?

A sound from the bed interrupted her thoughts. Turning from the hearth, she saw the girl in the bed blinking at her blearily.

"Who are you?" the girl slurred.

Marjorie's eyebrows went up. That was the most she had ever said in the hostess's company. Marjorie stood and crossed to the bed, where she set a hand on the girl's pale face. The skin was clammy but cool, the blue eyes meeting hers for once with some degree of accuracy.

"I'll be damned," said Marjorie. "You did it."

"Who are you? Where am I?"

"I'm the queen of the fairies and you're in my toadstool castle."

"...What?"

It was a cruel thing to say to someone just fighting her way back from the brink and Marjorie knew it, but it was a lot easier than explaining to Badger why she'd broken her promise. Besides, she probably wouldn't remember anyway.

"It doesn't matter. Now you have to rest."

The woman's eyes were already closing.

"There was... a girl...Where's... the girl..?"

She lost the fight to keep her eyes open and dropped off again. Marjorie stood up straight and sighed.

"Oh, drat."

Ramon and Siroc entered the common room in the morning to find D'Artagnan already there, pacing liked a caged tiger.

"D'Artagnan, did you sleep at all last night?" Siroc asked.

"Don't pretend you did either. At least I don't have to make my bed this morning."

Siroc and Ramon exchanged a look. It was true, they had to admit: They hadn't gotten a wink. They were both dreading the coming day, knowing that at this point, it was a lot more likely they would find Jacques's body than their spunky friend.

"The rain's stopped. That's something," Siroc said hopefully.

"Yes," Ramon sighed. "I'm so glad we can conduct a search without getting wet. Maybe now the cardinal's guards will help us out, that is if they don't already know what happened to Jacques. Ouch!"

He rubbed his arm where Siroc had hit him. Without hesitating another second, D'Artagnan grabbed his hat and sword and headed for the door.

"That's it. I'm going to find him, and I'm not coming back until I do."

"Wait!" Siroc stopped him. "You can't just run off without telling Duval -"

"What's he going to do, decommission me? Believe me, that's sounding mighty good about now."

"Find him how?" asked Ramon.

"The traditional way: Look."

"But we've looked everywhere. Are you going to turn over every stone in France by yourself? If you just give me a little time, I can devise a new search plan that -"

"Jacques may not have a little time, Siroc. Stay here if you like. I'm going to look for Jacques. If I can't find him, I'll look for clues. If I can't find any clues, I may concede that yours was a better idea. Until then, put up or piss off."

Slamming the door behind him, he headed for the stables.

"Honestly, some people have no imagination," he muttered. "Follow orders, D'Artagnan. Tell Duval if you so much as scratch your nose, D'Artagnan. They call her 'Bugsy' for a reason, D'Artagnan!"

His private rant was interrupted when Mimou appeared in the doorway to the stables and he almost tripped over her again.

"Jesus! You're like a jack-in-the-box from hell... My dear, what happened to you?"

Mimou was damp and streaked with mud. There were leaves in her hair, and numerous little tears in her riding coat. In all she looked like she'd been tangling with a wolverine, but her eyes were bright with urgency.

"Monsieur D'Artagnan, I have important news."

"That's nice but unless it's about Jacques, it'll have to wait."

"It is about Jacque's! At least I think it is. She wouldn't tell me very much."

D'Artagnan frowned. "Who?"

"The young lady who followed me here to find you!"

"What lady? Mimou, what are you talking about?"

Mimou cast a cautious look around. "Promise not to tell my uncle?"

"Mimou, I haven't got time -"

"I went out last night!" Mimou burst. "I went out looking for Jacques and I got lost and Wiggles threw me and the lady found me and fed me apples and asked me to bring her back here to find _you_!"

D'Artagnan blinked. "What?"

"Please don't make me say it all again."

"You went out alone? At night? In the rain? What were you thinking?"

"Don't be cross, Monsieur, please. I think the lady can help us and she says you're the only one she'll talk to."

D'Artagnan shook his head. All crypticness aside, it sounded like Mimou had come up with more than the musketeers had.

"Where is she?"

"In Wiggles's stall," Mimou said, obviously relieved that he'd decided to believe her. "Are you going to tell my uncle?"

"Er, I won't tell if you won't. Go and get cleaned up, now."

The stables seemed deserted when he entered, the horses mostly still asleep. He walked slowly as his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

"Hello?"

"Monsieur D'Artagnan?"

He spun in the direction of the soft voice and found a cloaked figure in the rear entryway.

"God, you startled me! What do you want?"

Silhouetted by the misty daylight, the figure approached. Though it was rather small, barely reaching the level of D'Artagnan's shoulder, his hand instinctively went to his sword hilt.

"Show your face," he demanded.

The hood was pushed back, revealing a young female face with a fair complexion and dark green eyes. Her hair was a dark reddish mop that was short, even for a man. A tiny silver hoop was set in the cartilage of her right ear, and balanced more or less by the delicate blue tattoo that reached across her left temple from the outer corner of her eye to the hairline.

Something told him the young lady wasn't French.

"Are you D'Artagnan?"

"Yes," he said carefully. "Who are you?"

"That's going to be the least of your concerns, believe me. Do you know the woods to the North of the city?"

D'Artagnan was becoming more suspicious by the moment. The maid's accent was as strange as her appearance - French, but with an odd pronunciation of the R's and short vowels. She almost sounded like a Briton.

"Is that what this is about? Listen, I'd like to help you, but I'm in a terrible hurry. I'm sure my patrol mate Ramon would be glad to give you directions."

The maid frowned. "Are you always this difficult? Do you know those woods or not?"

"Fine," D'Artagnan sighed. "What you need to do is -"

"Bother it all, _I_ know how to get there! Do you know the spot at its Western border where the hills begin?"

"Yes... Sort of."

"At the top of the second hill, there's a little cottage of log and stone. If you start now, you can make it there by dusk."

D'Artagnan stared at her. Biting her tongue, she spoke in a slow, rather patronizing tone: "Take the road through the woods until the bridge over the stream. Follow the stream west until you come to a fork in the trail. You take a left - that's a LEFT - and follow the slope for about half a mile. You can't miss it; it's right next to a waterfall."

"Okay," D'Artagnan stopped her. "First of all, I told you I have other business. Second, why would I go off alone to some obscure part of the woods on the word of someone who won't even tell me her name?"

With her level gaze never wavering, she produced a small weathered hand from within her cloak. Dangling from her fingers was a shining object on a thin chain. D'Artagnan's mouth went slightly ajar as he took it from her and examined it in his own palm.

_Jacqueline's cross..._

"Where did you get this? Is that _blood_?"

Silence answered him. When he looked up again, the girl was gone like smoke.

The Wolf built up the fire in the dark cave. He was hungry and wanted to hunt, especially after three days of dead ends, but the rain had washed away every trace of the scent. A growl rose in his throat. So his master wanted to test him? Someday he would be the master, and he wouldn't let childish games get in the way of progress.

But for now, there was little for it except this.

Carefully, he drew the outline of the obelisk before the fire in the dry dirt of the cave floor. Then, stripping up his sleeve to bare the shape tattooed into his flesh, he jammed his arm into the flames. He howled as the fire seared his skin, making the mark of the obelisk glow a blinding white hot.

"MASTER! HELP ME!"

The horrible voice he'd heard only once before echoed in his skull, threatening to rend it in two.

GUTTER FILTH. SON OF A DOG AND A WARTHOG. I HAVE GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING AND STILL YOU FAIL.

"I can succeed still, Master! Just show me the way!"

THE GREAT WOLF.

"Please, Master! A sign, a direction, a scent, anything!"

SAY IT, WOLF. MAKE ME BELIEVE IT.

The Wolf fought not to scream. The pain of the fire consuming his arm threatened to overwhelm him.

"MybloodtoashmyeyestoashmyfleshtoashIshallriseagaininthearmiesofmyredmaster!"

The fire flared, knocking him backwards against the cave wall. When the stars had cleared from his vision, he saw that the fire blazed with an image at its heart, that of a little cottage of wood and stone next to a waterfall in the hills.

The image disappeared and the fire snuffed itself.

Breathing hard, the Wolf stepped out into the daylight, examining his arm. It was whole and untouched with not hair out of place, but the smell of burning flesh remained and the mark of the obelisk emitted thin tendrils of steam.

A slow smile spread over his face, and he took off at a full run for the hills.


	6. Found

"How much farther is it?"

D'Artagnan bit his tongue. Hours and hours of this: Mimou asking how much farther it was, Mimou voicing every horrible thing that might've happened to Jacques, Mimou jumping at every forest noise and demanding to know what it was. For the umpteenth time, he questioned the wisdom of letting her join him. Let her tell on him to Duval. How bad could it be? Meanwhile, his buttocks had long since fallen asleep on the hard bench of their horse-draw cart and the damp air was doing nothing for his sinuses.

"Mimou, no matter how many times you ask me that, it's not going to get us there any faster."

"I know," Mimou sighed. "I'm just worried, that's all."

D'Artagnan couldn't help but soften. He offered up a small smile. "Me too, but we shouldn't be. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because Jacques's the toughest man I know. Did I ever tell you about the time we went under cover with a gang of smugglers?"

"No?"

He opened his mouth to tell the story, then thought better of it. "Er... Remind me to tell you when you're older."

"Now how much farther is it?"

"Half a league."

"Really?"

"No."

Mimou scowled at him but it was brief, as they reached the top of a hill and a house came into view. It sat on a step-off of the next hill, a little cottage of wood and stone with a thatch roof and a smoking chimney. A small waterfall babbled beside it.

"Hm. Cozy," D'Artagnan mused.

"Do you think Jacques's really in there?"

"I don't know. One way to find out, I suppose. Stay with the cart and I'll check it out."

"Wait!" protested Mimou. "Why do I have to stay with the cart?"

"Mimou, you're a smart girl, so think about it: No one knows where we are except for some barbarian who showed up on our doorstep and wouldn't even tell us her name. There's every reason to think this is some kind of trap. If something happens to me, I need you to go back to your uncle and tell him what happened."

"My uncle after sneaking off with you? I think I'd rather face the barbarians."

D'Artagnan considered that. "I don't blame you. But if you're going to be a musketeer, you've got to obey orders. Jacques's counting on you."

Reluctantly, Mimou nodded. D'Artagnan jumped out of the cart and started down the hill. When he found himself at the threshold of the cottage, he realized that he had no idea what to do next. If nobody was home, was he supposed to go waltzing in? And if somebody was home, what was he supposed to say? Good afternoon. Have you seen a pretty woman? Good afternoon. Have you seen a young man? Good afternoon. Have you seen a woman dressed as a man? No, I'm not losing my mind. That happened months ago.

_Quit stalling, Francois_, he mentally slapped himself. _You're not going to find Jacqueline if you stand here playing lawn ornament all day._

With a square of his shoulders and a set of his jaw, he raised his fist and knocked on the door. Almost immediately, the door swung open. There stood a fat, gray-haired lady in a kerchief and apron, her sleeves pushed up for work. She was scrutinizing him openly, as if she were about to scold him for something. Whatever he'd been expecting to find here, this wasn't quite it.

Remembering his manners, he snatched off his hat.

"Madame. Good afternoon."

This seemed to please her.

"Good afternoon, Monsieur. May I help you?"

"I hope so. I'm looking for a... a friend of mine. I recently met a young lady who pointed me this way."

"Ah," said the woman with a purposeful dust of her hands. "You'll be that D'Artagnan fellow then. Of course I'll invite you in, but first I must ask a vow of you."

D'Artagnan coughed. "Madame, I am flattered but I have a sweetheart."

"Don't be silly; I'm old enough to be your mother. I ask because of a promise _I_ made: This place, the girl who sent you here, and your humble hostess must be promptly forgotten and never spoken of again."

"... I see," said D'Artagnan.

"Promise, then?"

"All right. I swear on the sword of my father D'Artagnan the Great: No one will hear of this place from me."

"Excellent. Monsieur, would you care to come in?"

"I'd be delighted... I guess."

He followed her inside, past a common room and kitchen, around a nook to a semi-hidden area.

He felt his heart catch.

There was a short bed in the corner. In it, covered by a tattered patchwork quilt, was Jacqueline. And but for the rise and fall of her chest, she looked dead. He knelt next to the bed, taking in her pale skin, her cracked lips, her tangled hair, and the bandages that peeked through the open collar of her nightshirt.

He put a hand on her arm. "Jacques? Jacques, can you hear me?"

"Hm. That's an odd name for a girl."

Of course. They were probably a trifle past the point of pretending. He tried again.

"Jacqueline. Come on, wake up. You haven't thrashed me since Wednesday and I've had no idea what to do with myself."

"Monsieur, your 'friend' has been fighting for her life for four days. Her fever only broke this morning. Don't be offended if she's not up to talking to you for a while."

"What happened to her?"

"Shot, Monsieur."

"Shot!"

"Yes. She nearly bled to death and then infection set in. When she wakes up, you must congratulate her on beating the odds."

"But... But who shot her? Why? And what's she doing here? And who are you?"

The lady put her hands on her hips. "Monsieur, the less you know now, the less you'll have to forget later."

"But -"

"You promised. Now do you have a cart?"

"A cart? Why?"

"Because it'll be hard to move her anywhere on horseback, silly."

"Move her?" D'Artagnan said incredulously. "In this condition? Are you mad?"

"Not yet, Monsieur. Are you a doctor?"

"No, but I've seen enough battle wounds to know it's risky to go bouncing down the road with someone who has an infected gunshot wound. Are you sure it's safe?"

"No, but I am sure it's safer than staying here."

D'Artagnan was starting to feel like his head was about to explode. "What?"

"You promised. Are you a gentleman or not?"

"All right, all right. Just tell me one thing. Then I'll leave you alone and never darken your doorstep again."

"Listen, you. That girl has been through the bloody ringer and the ones who put her there are still creeping about somewhere. There's every reason to believe they'll eventually sniff her trail back here to finish the job. If I were you, I wouldn't waste time."

"Was it the girl with the tattooed face? Did she do this to Jacqueline?"

The woman sighed and looked him dead in the eye. "No."

The Wolf watched from the peak of an adjacent hill as the cart pulled away from the cottage. With its three passengers, it was heading unmistakably back to the city.

Half an hour. If he'd gotten there half an hour earlier...

Rage boiled in his stomach until it exploded from his throat in a primal roar.

Jacqueline knew she was moving. Light flickered through her eyelids in strange patterns. The creek of wagon wheels was constant. She was also being rocked gently with the rhythm of the road, her shoulder protesting with each bump and dip. This was getting to be like reading a book with missing pages: Turn the leaf, and you were in a completely new scene with no explanation.

A particularly rough bump forced a moan from her throat and she felt a thin pair of arms tighten around her.

"Jacques? Are you awake?"

She blinked her eyes open. Above her, a canopy of tree branches passed before the dusky sky. Then, her view was obstructed by the looming face of a worried young girl.

"... Mimou?"

Mimou's face broke into a vastly relieved grin. Jacqueline was lying in the back of a hay-lined cart, wrapped in blankets with her head cushioned in Mimou's lap. Mimou was holding her steady as best she could with her little arms, but having little success thanks to the oaf who was driving.

"I knew you'd be okay. I prayed for you until my knees got sore and then I prayed some more. Everybody's been looking for you, even the cardinal's guard. And Uncle Martin too."

Jacqueline cleared her throat. "Mimou, what's going on? What happened?"

"I-I don't know. Don't you?"

But Jacqueline could already feel the darkness creeping up on her again, her eyelids getting heavy.

"The girl... Where's..."

Mimou stroked Jacqueline's hair. "It's okay, Jacques. We're taking you home."

The back of the wagon fell quiet. D'Artagnan kept his eyes on the road, for all that he would've liked to pull the horse to a halt and embrace Jacqueline until the sun came up again. Musketeers didn't do that sort of thing, especially when they had ground to cover before it got too dark to see, not to mention a very observant child on board. Maybe Siroc's sense was contagious.


	7. Healing

"He WHAT?"

Duval stormed into the garrison, at least as well as a man with a cane can storm, with Ramon running to keep up with him.

"No Captain, what I meant to say was he went out looking for... um... Jacque's favorite coffee place! Yes! He wanted a little extra pick-me-up, so he went out to get some coffee, which Jacques once said was particularly good, and it must've been so good that he stayed to have many bowls and... just had to share one with your niece, because not to share such a discovery would be a travesty of justice and... Captain? Captain, please slow down!"

D'Artagnan stood at attention when Duval barged into the common room, coming to a stop so close to him that his cane came to rest on the younger man's toe.

"Damn your eyes, man! What were you thinking?"

"Captain -"

"Sneaking out without leave? Taking a horse without notice? Without even a word? This is not your father's summer house; this is a military facility. You don't just come and go as you please!"

"Captain -"

"And with my NEICE? We have no idea what's going on in those woods and you drag an innocent little girl into it? I should kill you! My sister should kill _me_!"

"Captain, we found Jacques."

Duval froze. "... What?"

"He was in the woods quite a bit of distance off the trail. That's why we couldn't find him before."

"Where is he? Is he all right?"

D'Artagnan hesitated. "Well..."

Just then, a loud noise of protest sounded from the hallway that led off to the quarters. Duval followed it to Jacques's door, entered, and stopped short at the sight before him. Jacques lay in the bed, wan and unconscious, covered carefully to the armpits with the bedclothes. Siroc was kneeling next to the bed, bent over Jacques's inflamed shoulder and gingerly wrapping it in a strange-smelling strip of linen. Mimou was perched on the edge of the bed, next to Jacques's head, watching Siroc's hands in much the same way an owl watches a mouse.

"All right, all right, I'm sorry!" said Siroc. "I won't move the blanket again. I just don't see what the big -"

"I don't want him to get cold," Mimou insisted.

"I assure you, it won't hurt him if I just -"

"What's that?"

"What?"

"That," Mimou said pointing. "That tangle in his skin."

"Oh. That's a line of suture. We use it to hold a wound shut when it can't close on its own."

"Oooh," Mimou said, leaning in for a closer look.

"Private, I will thank you not to expose my niece to such matters!"

Siroc shot to his feet. "Captain! I-I tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn't -"

"Mimou, go inside."

"But Uncle, it was just getting interesting!"

"Now, Mimou!"

Sulking, Mimou left the room. Once she was gone, Duval took a breath to rein in his temper.

"All right. One at a time, what the hell is going on?"

D'Artagnan took a breath of his own. "Sir, Jacques was shot."

"WHAT?"

"And before you ask, we don't know by whom. He hasn't been able to tell us much yet, and the friars weren't much help either."

"What friars?"

"Mimou and I found him in the abbey on the edge of the woods. The friars had been caring for him. At least I assume they were, but they'd all taken a vow of silence and I've never been good at charades."

Duval turned to the other man. "Siroc?"

"It's a shoulder wound, Sir. It looks as though a blood conduit was hit, and then there was obviously battlefield fever. I must say, he was well taken care of to have even survived. I've lanced out some more of the infection. With proper rest, he'll recover with no more than a scar."

No more than a scar. Let it never be said that Siroc didn't have a gift for downplaying the strangest of situations.

"Let me know the moment he wakes up. I'm going to see a horse about a man."

Duval thumped out of the room. The young men each released a breath.

"Tell me," Siroc said, drying his hands on a towel. "Were these Franciscan friars, or Jesuits?"

"Are you through in here?"

"More or less. He should be watched in case he worsens, though."

"I'll do it," said D'Artagnan.

"But you've been out all -"

"You think you can watch him sleep better than I can? I promise I'll come and get you if anything interesting happens."

Siroc put his hands up in surrender and walked toward the hall, pausing at the door.

"Thanks for bringing him back, D'Artagnan."

D'Artagnan offered a tight smile and nodded, then pulled up a wooden chair to the bedside, settling in for a long night. He looked at Jacqueline: Pale and thin, with dark circles under her eyes and her brown hair in a tangle... and still achingly beautiful.

"What am I going to do with you, Shorty?"

Mazarin emerged from the secret oubliette into his study. The meeting had been long. There were many people in the world on whom subtlety was wasted, and Mazarin seemed to have recruited them all for his order. By the time he'd managed to convey his plans to the men, he was tired and cross and wanted nothing more than a glass of wine before bed. To his dismay however, the first thing he found upon entering the room was his captain of the guard, disheveled and unwashed, standing with his eyes downcast in the middle of the floor.

"Captain Gilbert," Mazarin said through his molars. "May I assume that since you've deemed it appropriate to return, not to mention appear unannounced in my private study, that you've found the Cross of Asher?"

"No, Your Eminence."

"Then would you prefer a red-hot poker or the cat-o'-nine-tails? And I hope you've given serious thought to whether you're fonder of your eyes or your teeth, because you will be allowed to keep one of them at the most."

"They found LePonte, Your Eminence."

Mazarin stopped advancing on Gilbert and blinked.

"LePonte?"

"Yes, Your Eminence. He's alive."

"And the cross?"

"I don't know, Your Eminence. He's recovering in the garrison, surrounded by musketeers."

Mazarin took a moment to absorb this information. Cons: The cross was still at large and there was a surviving witness. Pros: With LePonte back in the picture, especially alive, the back-up plan was that much easier. In the end, the good news won out and his smile appeared.

"Well then. No use crying over spilled milk, is there?"

Gilbert released a shaking breath. "No, Your Eminence."

"I want you to keep an eye on our Monsieur LePonte. Let me know his every move. And if he leaves the garrison, I want to know where he goes. Is that clear?"

Gilbert nodded vigorously, relieved beyond words that the cardinal had used the term 'keep an eye'.

"...cqeline? Come on, Jacqueline. It's time to wake up."

The voice was so near that she could feel his breath on her ear, pulling her once again back to awareness. She felt strange, as limp as a dishrag, as though she'd just run twenty miles in the summer heat. When she opened her eyes, the blur she saw slowly focused into the hovering face of...

"... D'Artagnan?"

Her voice was weak and scratchy from disuse, but his shoulders fell in relief as he released the breath he'd been holding.

"Thank God. I've been sitting here so long I can't feel myself from the waist down."

Jacqueline frowned. "What are you doing here?"

"'Here?' I work here. Jacqueline, you're back at the garrison."

Looking past him, she found it was true: The familiar wooden walls of her own room stared back at her. She was lying in her bed, flat on her back. Turning her head, she glanced down at the bandages about her throbbing shoulder. That was when she realized that beneath the covers, she was naked. Something must've shown on her face, because D'Artagnan quickly put his hands up.

"I didn't see anything, I swear."

"Oh really? How long have you been sitting there?"

D'Artagnan smiled. She must be feeling better.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"... Tired. What happened?"

"You're asking me? You're the one who's been missing for four days."

"Four days!" Jacqueline exclaimed, attempting to sit up and nearly falling over.

"Easy!" D'Artagnan caught her and guided her back down. "Yes, four days of slogging through the mud looking for you. I hope you remember this on my birthday."

"But I... How did I..?"

"Look, all I know is that Mimou and I finally caught up with you at a little abbey in the hills. The friars said you'd been shot and had a bad fever from the infection. Then we brought you back here and Siroc looked after you."

"But Siroc didn't..?"

"No, no. Mimou saw to that." D'Artagnan frowned. "There's something strange about that girl. Ever since she heard you were missing, she's been like a cat on a set of drapes. I've been to all ends trying to keep her at arm's length."

Jacqueline surprised him by laughing a little.

"You're such a fool, D'Artagnan. She was protecting me."

"Protecting you? From whom?"

"From you. She knows I'm a woman."

D'Artagnan threw up his hands. All that wasted bother!

"Anything else I should know?"

Jacqueline tried to give another sharp answer, but was interrupted by a coughing fit. D'Artagnan hurried to pour a cup of water, gently slid an arm under her shoulders, and levered her up to drink it. When he let her back down again he was quiet, watching as she caught her breath. Jacqueline caught the poorly concealed worry in his eyes and offered a weak smile.

"Next time I get shot, remind me to be closer to the garrison."

D'Artagnan sighed wearily. "Jacqueline, what the hell happened to you?"

Jacqueline closed her eyes and searched her swiss-cheesed memory.

"I was on assignment to deliver a letter for the cardinal... I was ambushed in the woods... The order. D'Artagnan, it was the secret order!"

"Why would they come after you?"

"You mean besides the fact that none of us are on particularly good terms? I'm not sure. All they asked for was my... my cross."

At the thought, the memory of a small hand jerking her cross from her neck flashed in her mind. That gave way to...

"The girl. Where's the girl?"

"What girl?"

"She was... Damn, it's so fuzzy! Red hair, fair skin... And tattoos all over her shoulders. I think... I think she helped me."

D'Artagnan gave her his best patronizing look. "I think you had a nightmare with a carnie in it."

"No! She was there. She took my cross. The order came after me to get to it and she took it!"

D'Artagnan reached into a pocket and produced the little crucifix, holding it aloft for Jacqueline to see.

"You mean this cross?"

Jacqueline blinked at it. It was hers all right, and still speckled with her blood.

"That's impossible!"

"The friars asked me to keep it for you," D'Artagnan said gently. "Jacqueline, it was a dream. That's all."

Jacqueline sighed and closed her eyes, exhausted.

"You're maddening. If I was feeling better, I'd punch you."

D'Artagnan smiled.

"Did I mention how unbelievably good it is to see you?"

Jacqueline emitted a weak laugh. "Why, Monsieur D'Artagnan. Is that sincerity coming from you? Are you sure I'm not dying?"

"You're not dying, but you came damn close. If you keep this up, you're going to have me completely gray by thirty."

Too tired to press him anymore, Jacqueline found his hand where it rested on the mattress and squeezed it.

"Thanks for coming after me."

"Hey. I'm your man, remember?"

"I'm pretty sure that was a dream _you_ had."

Just then, the door opened and they quickly separated their hands before Duval was through the frame.

"D'Artagnan, how's our... Well, look who finally decided to join us. Do you know you've been unconscious for four days?"

The Wolf stood in the square, staring at the garrison as the market bustled around him. He hated this act he was forced to play, almost as much as he hated the audience. He was surrounded by imbeciles who couldn't see three steps in front of their faces, and he was supposed to play the fool for them?

_Patience, my pet_, the familiar dark voice echoed in his mind. _Take the time to do this right and you will have all the bones you can chew. Fail me again, and I'll show you what it's like down here._

The Wolf turned and stormed off toward the café. If he had to sit on his hands, he might as well have a glass of wine.


	8. Odds

"Come in."

Siroc entered the cardinal's study and found Mazarin sitting at his desk.

"Siroc, my friend," he said with a smile. "Do sit down."

Obediently, Siroc took one of the overstuffed chairs opposite the cardinal, careful not to mar the velvet.

"I understand you're seeing to Monsieur LePonte. How is the young man?"

"Healing, Your Eminence."

"Excellent news. Now, as for these heathen thugs who attacked him, I'm sure I don't have to tell you how important their capture is to me. No one comes after one of ours and lives to tell. You do know that, yes?"

"Of course, Your Eminence."

"Good. Then you also know how important our cooperation on the matter is, and would be willing to share any clues you may have garnered. For instance, the type of gun he was shot with? The range?"

"It was a single-ball flintlock pistol. The distance was no more that twenty paces."

"And was he robbed as well? Were there any articles missing? His sword perhaps? Bandolier..? Jewelry?"

"The sword was with him, Your Eminence. As far as other valuables, I don't think he carries any."

"You'd be surprised what some would consider valuable. Why, some would even melt down a crucifix and sell it for the metal. Monsieur LePonte wears one, doesn't he? Was it found?"

Something in Siroc's head piped up, telling him to be very careful.

"Not that I know of, but Your Eminence would have to ask him to be sure."

Mazarin made him jump by shooting to his feet and slamming his hands down on the desktop.

"Dammit, man! I'm asking _you_!" There was another knock on at the door. "_What_?"

Philippe scurried into the room and bowed.

"Your Eminence. There's an urgent matter that requires your attention."

"Philippe, can't you see I'm conducting business?"

"Please forgive me, but it's the... um... the... the lads. You know... The lads?"

Mazarin sighed and stood up, then carefully fixed Siroc with his smile again.

"You'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid. I trust you can see yourself out. And please, feel free to stop in if you think of anything that may further the case."

Siroc bowed as Mazarin made his exit, only then catching his eye on the desk. There next to the quill set was a small, battered book with a blue jacket. There were no words on the cover, but the outline of a black cross.

Out in the hallway...

"What do you mean by interrupting me, boy? This had better be good."

Philippe looked over his shoulder and pulled Mazarin into the shadows of the suits of armor lining the corridor.

"It's Monsieur LePonte, Your Eminence. He wears the Cross of Asher again!"

"...You're sure?"

"I saw it with my own eyes! I was passing through the garrison and caught sight of him taking a walk around the common room. It was there about his neck as plain as day."

A grin slowly crept across Mazarin's face.

"Well. This is good news, isn't it?"

Jacqueline was sitting up in bed, reclining against the pillows and flipping through yet another dusty volume from Brother Antoine's library. The stack next to her bed was now as high as her waist, and she still hadn't found anything useful.

It had been a full week before her strength returned enough for her to get out of bed on her own. The time was spent with endless rounds of eating and sleeping, trying to regain some of the weight she had lost. On the fourth day, Siroc introduced her to a series of tortures that were supposed to strengthen her shoulder. She did them religiously without a word of complaint, gritting her teeth against the pain and reminding herself that every repetition was a step closer to getting out and looking for answers.

The only other thing to occupy the hours was her research. Brother Antoine, having heard of her convalescence, had been kind enough to deliver several volumes every day. As the religious volumes ran thin, he began to bring other materials that might be helpful: World history, Christian art, metal working. Each one got less and less likely to be relevant to her cause. The one in her lap now was on the current state of English expansion. Unless something very strange was going on, it would be a reach for information on her cross to be there. Nevertheless...

She turned the page and her heart skipped a beat.

There in the corner of the page, almost as a footnote, was a picture of a pair in one-on-one combat. The victor was a knight in full armor with a surcoat of English colors. The man dying on the end of his spear was a grotesque caricature, half naked and snarling like a bear. From his neck to his knees, his skin swirled with an intricate design.

_Seen here: A Celt falls to the righteous arm of the Lord. These particular pagans, once the dominant population of Scotland, Ireland and Gall, now lurk in scattered factions about the islands._

Jacqueline read and reread the caption. Celts. She'd heard the term spoken by soldiers when they told stories of battles overseas. They'd always been painted as rough barbarians who ate the still-beating hearts of their enemies. And yes, there had been references to tattoos the color of woad. She hadn't thought to ask what woad was. If it turned out to be some shade of blue...

She threw off the blanket and reached for her clothes. Gunshot wound or no, she had an errand to run.

"All I'm saying is that maybe we ought to get to church more often. I mean, a few extra points with the almighty never hurt anyone, right?"

Siroc plucked the coffee bowl out of Ramon's hand. "That's it. I'm cutting you off."

"I mean it! That strange cult keeps showing up more and more often and now they come after Jacques specifically? Something's going on, I tell you! God is punishing us for our promiscuity and lack of faith."

"He's punishing _you_ for promiscuity. He's punishing me for being in the same room."

"Yeah, joke all you want. Dark forces are rearing their heads and I don't know about you, but I've got some repenting to do. Gentlemen, I'll see you back at the garrison."

Ramon left the Café' Nuveau, passing D'Artagnan on his way in. Frowning, D'Artagnan found Siroc's table and sat.

"Where's Ramon off to? He can't have had time for more than two pots."

Siroc looked up from the book he was studying. "Him? He's off to find God or something. The way things are going, it doesn't sound like a bad idea."

"You haven't found anything either?"

"Not a trace. If Jacques killed five men in the fight, you'd think there'd be some sign."

"These guys are good at cleaning up," D'Artagnan muttered.

"Not that good, if they left Jacques alive." Siroc shut his notebook. "That reminds me: How do you suppose the friars fought off the rest of the ambush party?"

"Huh?"

"You know, the friars who were caring for Jacques when you found him? He said he didn't match all of his assailants. And since he's still alive, I can only conclude that someone else did. And unless they're teaching combat skills in seminary school now, I have to conclude that something very strange is going on."

D'Artagnan gulped and scratched the back of his neck, trying to think of a way to change the subject.

"Speaking of Jacques, have you checked in on him this morning?"

Siroc nodded. "Growing stronger by the day. I'm running out of excuses to keep Duval off his back."

"What?"

"Nothing." Siroc's eyebrows arched as he looked past D'Artagnan to the doorway. "And speak of the devil."

D'Artagnan looked over his shoulder and found Jacqueline walking stiffly toward them. As she went by, the other musketeers in the café noticed her and gathered a cheer, some clapping her on the shoulder in celebration of her first public appearance since her ordeal in the woods. She smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. D'Artagnan looked her over, fighting not to rush to her side and carry her the rest of the way. Her arm was slung, her skin still a bit too white. Her clothes were even bigger on her now than they had been before. When she settled on the bench next to him, she let out a grateful sigh.

"Jacques. What are you doing up?" said Siroc.

"I just needed to stretch my legs. If I have to stay in that bed much longer, I'm going to go crazy."

"Better crazy than sick again."

"I'm fine, Siroc, really. Don't be such a mother hen."

"He wouldn't if you had the sense to look after yourself."

Jacqueline gave D'Artagnan a dirty look.

"Any news? Duval stopped in yesterday and said no one's heard from the order since the ambush."

"It's strange, like they're lying low. I keep expecting them to jump out of the closet, but I think they're waiting, regrouping for something big," said D'Artagnan.

"That's comforting. What about the cardinal?"

"Funny you should ask," said Siroc. "He called me into his office yesterday and started asking me things about you."

"Me?" Jacqueline said, not liking the sound of that at all. "Why would the Mazarin ask about me?"

"Damned if I know, but he seemed more interested in that crucifix you wear than in you... Jacques, are you all right? You look a little paler all of a sudden."

Jacqueline's hand went instinctively to the comforting weight of her cross.

"Actually, I am feeling a little tired. D'Artagnan, would you mind giving me a hand back to the garrison?"

"Sure, Jacques."

D'Artagnan stood, offering a supporting arm to his comrade. Siroc watched as the two of them left, shaking his head inwardly. There were advantages to being the man no one noticed, but why did that translate to the idea that he noticed nothing?

"You're looking better," D'Artagnan said when they turned into an empty side-street. "I have to say I'm impressed. I've seen men twice your size take an entire season to get back on their feet after such a wound."

"Well, I was well-tended. That reminds me: As soon as I can ride again, I want you to take me back to the abbey so I can thank the friars properly."

Jacqueline felt him stiffen.

"You know, I wouldn't. They, um... They're a silent order and it would just be awkward."

"But you said they told you everything they knew."

"Yes, well, they were surprisingly good at semi fore."

Jacqueline stopped walking and faced him.

"D'Artagnan, it would be so much easier and so much less embarrassing if you'd cut the merde and tell me the truth."

D'Artagnan's eyes began to twitch and he emitted a nervous laugh.

"What do you mean? I'm not -"

"Yes you are. I know what I saw and I know it wasn't a dream. That girl was a Celt."

"A Celt? You mean those savages from the islands? Here?"

"Yes."

D'Artagnan laughed again. "I think you've had your nose buried in books for too long. You're starting to -"

But his remark broke off in a strangled squeak as Jacqueline's hand lashed out and clamped down on his nethers in a move reminiscent of their first duel.

"I think you would agree that I've put up with a lot in the last few days and you can imagine how my patience would be wearing thin," she said calmly. "The truth, D'Artagnan. Now."

Let it never be said that Francois D'Artagnan didn't know when he was beaten. And even if she wasn't ready to geld him, it was clear there was no more point in trying to salvage his story.

"All right! Lay off, will you?" Jacqueline let him go and he took a careful step back. "I don't know much. We'd been to all ends looking for you when all of a sudden she showed up at the garrison and told me where you were."

Jacqueline threw up her one good arm. "And you're just telling me this now?"

"I swore on my father's sword!"

"You don't even like your father!"

"Look, she saved your life and all she asked of me was that I keep it all secret. How can I say no to that?"

"There's something else, isn't there?"

D'Artagnan hesitated until she made another move toward his pants.

"All right, all right! She may have made some reference to you being unsafe there. She wouldn't tell me why."

"So you lied to keep me from going back there."

"No! No, no, no... Well, yes."

The look in her eyes actually scared him a little. If he didn't know better, he would've thought she was about to hit him.

"For God's sake, I don't need you to protect me!" she thundered at him. "If you _ever_ lie to me again, I'm going to gouge your eyes out with a spoon!"

"You're right, okay? I'm sorry. But for God's sake, give me a break. We all thought you were dead. I wouldn't have to tell you what that was like if you had any imagination at all, but apparently you don't. So suffice it to say that I would rather dive naked onto a hill of fire ants than go through that again. I know you don't want to hear that, but it's true."

They stood at an impasse for a moment, mirroring each other's furious expression until Jacqueline took a calming breath.

"Tomorrow, D'Artagnan. Tomorrow you're telling me where to find the Celt and so help me, if you lead me around for one step -"

"Fine. But I'm not telling you. I'm showing you. AND -" he interrupted when she opened her mouth to protest, "if I were you, I wouldn't argue because it's either me or Mimou. Believe me; a day trip with that girl seems like a week."

"A day trip with you seems like a month."

"Maybe, but at least I won't ask you if we're there yet every three minutes. I'm not letting you out of my sight and that's the end of it."

The man was maddening, but he had a point. If the order showed up again, she was in no shape to fight off half a dozen men again. Damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction of hearing it, though.

"All right. Just don't slow me down."


	9. Badger

Badger entered the cottage with the bucket of milk she'd just coaxed from Madame DeGhent's cow, one of the new kittens wobbling after her. Marjorie looked up from her paring and watched her begin filling the bottles for the day, pausing to regard the kitten and let it lick the cream off her fingers. Marjorie smiled sadly: In the role of a country farm girl, Badger looked like a wolf who was trying to find life as a barn cat. Nevertheless, she did her mundane chores without a word of protest or complaint. The lady of the house just hoped she'd keep refraining from practicing her moves in the chicken coop, as the poor birds were almost too nervous to lay eggs as it was.

"Morning, ma petite."

"Morning, Madge. How's your hip today?"

Marjorie laughed. "It's doing better than my garlic supply. Speaking of, I caught sight of our girl about the square yesterday afternoon."

Badger tried to hide the stiffening of her shoulders and cleared her throat.

"Did you?"

"She looked well," Marjorie went on, pretending not to notice Badger's nervous reaction, "for all that she's a man again. Upright and walking and all. I would've liked to fatten her up a little before her gentleman came to collect her, though. Far too thin for healthy, that one."

"That's nice."

"Is it? I haven't seen anyone this excited since the friars' cabaret. Please give me some indication that it was worth the trouble."

Badger set down the milk and looked down at her hands, her face a mask of quiet sadness.

"I'm sorry, Madge. I shouldn't have involved you."

"Nonsense," Marjorie said, waving her off. "You know I love a good intrigue as much as the next widow. I'd just like to know what has you sneaking and sulking about all weak."

"I told you. It's a complicated -"

"- Complicated matter, you've said." Marjorie crossed the room and put a hand to Badger's cheek, turning her face to meet her own. "You can stop the mysterious warrior scite, ma petite. You don't have to pretend for me."

Badger chewed her lower lip, suddenly looking like a lost little girl despite everything else about her appearance.

"I screwed up, Madge."

"What do you mean? You saved her, didn't you?"

"I was too late! She almost died because _they_ found her first."

Marjorie gave her a look. "And now that no one else will beat you for it, you're doing it yourself."

"The Watchers should've sent someone else. If they'd only listened!"

"You're wrong, my girl. You're exactly the one they should've sent."

"Madge," Badger said, shaking her head. "I didn't even know who she was at first. I thought she was a man."

"Exactly. Anyone else would've gone on and left her for dead, but not you." Marjorie patted her cheek and turned back to her vegetables. "You're a good girl, like your mother. It's more useful than people think."

Badger sighed. "She also saw me. I wasn't supposed to let her see me."

"Bah. The poor thing was half dead. For all she probably knows, it was I that saved her."

Badger suppressed a laugh. It was impossible to imagine one of them being mistaken for the other. She herself was thin, short, small-breasted, and barely twenty-six. Marjorie was built like an oak stump and a trifle past middle-age. If you put a corset on her, she developed a shelf fit for a full tea service. On rainy days, Badger sometimes wondered who would suffer more damage: Marjorie, or the runaway cart that should ever strike her.

"In all fairness, you did save her," said Badger.

"None of your cheek. You know what I mean."

Badger finally allowed herself a little smile.

"We'll call it a team effort. At least this way, we can share the blame."

There was a knock at the door.

"That'll be the miller." Marjorie tsked at her sticky hands. "Get it for me, won't you? And for God's sake, look a little more cheerful. You don't want him thinking you're some hostile barbarian."

"Yes. I'm sure a personable barbarian is much better."

Badger opened the door and found herself face-to-face with Jacqueline Roget.

She screamed, slammed the door shut, and barricaded it with her back. Marjorie put a hand to her bosom.

"Good lord, woman. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing!" Badger squeaked. "I just, um... I-I really don't like the look of that miller. Shady character. Very shady."

"He is ninety years old."

The knocking at the door turned into a pounding and a muffled voice sounded through.

"_Open up, in the name of the musketeers!_"

Marjorie put a fist on her hip and fixed Badger with another look. Badger moaned in despair.

"Oh, I'm the worst druid ever!"

"Ma petite, she's a soldier, not a shark."

"It is a _complicated_ -"

"Yes, yes. We've heard." Marjorie peeled Badger off the door and gave her a prod toward the back door. "Out to the yard with you. You can chop the wood while I get rid of her."

Badger hurried out of the cottage. Marjorie straightened her apron, squared her shoulders, and lifted the latch.

Meanwhile, out on the stoop...

"Maybe you should ease up, before you break your only good arm," D'Artagnan said carefully.

Jacqueline stopped pounding on the door just long enough to snap at him: "Maybe you should stand back and stop scaring people away."

"Are you blind? I'm not the one she screamed at."

"She's not going to let us in! You try it. Use both hands."

"Jacqueline, I'm not going to break down a lady's door."

Jacqueline turned on him. "D'Artagnan the younger, I've spent an entire year looking for answers. I've been ambushed several times, stabbed, and shot. Today alone, I've been twelve miles on horseback, two miles on foot, and up three different hills. I am not going to be deterred by a stupid door!"

"And you're not going to be deterred by a bent brain either," he muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Just then, the door opened. The form gracing the frame was far different from the flash of memory on which Jacqueline had been operating. However, the sight did spark recognition, one of deft hands and a steady voice.

"You," Jacqueline breathed.

The woman quirked a gray eyebrow. D'Artagnan appeared at Jacqueline's shoulder.

"Madame, before you say anything, I'd just like to mention that I didn't really tell her anything. She guessed. All I did was confirm, and that was under threat of torture."

Marjorie ignored him and smiled warmly at Jacqueline.

"Mademoiselle. It's good to see you looking so well. How is your shoulder? I must say, I'm surprised you're up to coming all this way so soon."

"So were the rest of us," said D'Artagnan.

"Madame," Jacqueline said. "I apologize for the intrusion, but I was wondering -"

"Out back."

"...I'm sorry?"

"The young lady you're looking for is out in the back yard. Feel free to go through the house."

Frowning, Jacqueline bowed to Marjorie and D'Artagnan followed her to the back door. Once back outside and in view of the yard, they stopped short.

There was the fighter, as human as the family next door, swinging an ax at a chopping block next to the barn. She wore breeches tucked into mid-calf boots and a form-fitting vest that left the tattoos about her left arm in plain sight.

It seemed impossible. The girl fought like a demon and disappeared like a dream. Now she was doing a chore like a... a normal person. So intent on the task was she that she didn't seem to notice the guests.

Shaking herself back to earth, Jacqueline piped up. "Pardon me -"

The prompt came with the fighter's ax on its downswing. As startled as a deer at a gunshot, she was thrown off balance, her ax barely catching the corner of the log she'd meant to split. The log subsequently flipped up and clocked her in the forehead. Jacqueline and D'Artagnan cringed in unison with Marjorie, who was watching from the kitchen window.

Badger dropped her ax in favor of clutching at the welt left by the log and turned furious eyes on the hostess.

"_Madge_!"

"Oh, hush," Marjorie scoffed from the window. "She deserves to know the truth. And you deserve, finally, to tell it."

With that, she shut the window and disappeared into the house, leaving the younger people alone. But as soon as Jacqueline took a step toward her, Badger dropped to hands and knees, her head bowed almost to the ground, and stayed there. Jacqueline frowned at D'Artagnan, who shrugged.

"Nobody told me you'd been elected pope," he said.

Jacqueline strode forward until she was standing next to Badger, who still hadn't moved. Rather, she was holding herself rigid, as though faced with a rearing cobra.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Forgive me, my lady. I know that my head must not be higher than yours. I didn't see you there."

Jacqueline couldn't begin to list the things that were wrong with that statement. She went with the most obvious one.

"Forgive me for saying so, but I don't think you'd have that problem even if you were standing up. What's your name?"

"I'm no one, my lady."

"I'm no one's lady! And would you please stand up? I didn't come here to talk to the back of your neck."

Haltingly, Badger got to her feet.

"Now," said Jacqueline. "I want you to start talking."

"Nothing I could say is worthwhile, my lady."

"Stop calling me that..! _Now_ what are you doing?"

"I'm averting my eyes, my lady."

"Well, don't. You're acting ridiculous. Now stand up straight and face me."

Reluctantly, the small woman obeyed. D'Artagnan observed as the women stared at each other, half-expecting the Celt to sprint into the forest. Jacqueline meanwhile felt the green gaze slam into her memory, igniting recognition through the fog.

"It _is_ you," she said.

Badger's strong shoulders sagged in defeat.

"Yes, my... Yes."

"Well? Why didn't you just tell me?"

"You didn't ask."

Jacqueline tried to swallow her mounting exasperation. "I didn't ask because you ran away."

"I ran away because I was afraid you'd ask."

"Do you know how close I am to calling you out?" Jacqueline exploded.

"She'll do it, young lady."

"Shut up, D'Artagnan! Now listen, you. You don't just appear out of nowhere, run into the hills with me, and then take off without so much as a word! Someone thought it was so important to have me dead that he sent nine men to do the job and I think you know why. Now who are you, why were you following me that day, and what the hell are you looking at?"

"Your forehead is sweating," Badger said quietly.

Dizziness hit Jacqueline so suddenly that she swayed on her feet.

"Jacqueline!" D'Artagnan said, rushing to her side.

Siroc's warning that she was still in no shape to be riding over the countryside echoed hollowly in her ears as she fought to hold herself upright. When she opened her eyes again, she found she'd unconsciously grabbed onto Badger's shoulder. Badger meanwhile was watching her with a strange look, which broke in a sigh.

"Come inside before you fall over."

Badger walked back to the cottage, leaving Jacqueline and D'Artagnan to catch up.

"Should we go in?" asked D'Artagnan. "I can't tell if she's just inviting us to be polite, or if she intends to kill us."

"She might intend to kill _you_, but she went to far too much trouble keeping me alive and I intend to find out why."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

D'Artagnan steered her back into the cottage, where he deposited her at the kitchen table and stood over her like a protective statue. Badger meanwhile was tinkering over the stove, adding this and that to a steaming tea kettle. Jacqueline watched her, thinking.

"What's your name?" she tried again.

"Er... Badger. Call me Badger."

"Badger?"

"Yes."

"Badger. Like the animal."

"Yes. Listen, Mademoiselle..?"

"Please, call me 'Jacques'. It's safer."

"Right. I don't mean to be difficult. I just wish you hadn't found me, that's all."

"But why?"

"Because if you found me, They will find you."

"Who are 'They'? More Celts? That's what you are, isn't it?"

Badger paused in her puttering to make a frustrated noise. "It was a nice secret organization we had, once. Very nice."

She turned back to Jacqueline and offered the steaming mug. Jacqueline had another flash of memory, which involved Marjorie, a similar cup, and a vile concoction that smelled like boiled bitters and tasted worse.

Reading her look, Badger said "You'll like this one better."

Jacqueline was skeptical, but had a feeling the conversation would go no further if she didn't take the tea. She accepted and took a cautious sip, quite surprised to find that it tasted of honey, cloves and oranges. She took a bigger swallow and found she felt better almost instantly. When she looked up again, Badger was sitting in the opposite chair, a tiny smile in place.

"Good, eh?"

Jacqueline nodded, suddenly feeling a little ashamed.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. You saved my life, and I thank you. I'm just so tired of everything slipping away before I can understand it."

"You'd have managed, I think," said Badger. "After all, you were the one who slew five of the bastards, and I only three."

"But why? Why'd you help me if you were just going to disappear?"

"Madge doesn't understand," Badger said. "I know how much you want answers. I do. But there are men who have done nothing for the past year but try to track me down. Very bad men. And if you found me, they'll find you."

"Badger, you'll forgive me if I'm having trouble following you, but I've been very sick," Jacqueline said reasonably. "Now would you please start from the beginning?"

Badger chewed her lip. Well, there was no point in secrets now, was there?

"How much do you know?"

"I know that there's an underground order known as the Knights of the Black Tabernacle, whose calling card is some kind of obelisk. I know their numbers have infiltrated the musketeers and the cardinal's guard. I know that my crucifix has made its way across the ocean to Nova Scotia and back, and that a priest begged my forgiveness with his dying breath when he saw it. And I know that my brother died bringing it back to me."

Something strange flashed in Badger's eyes.

"Nova Scotia? In the Americas."

"Unless there's some other Nova Scotia lying around," said D'Artagnan.

"And you're sure he's dead?"

"The priest? I didn't see it with my own eyes, but my brother wouldn't lie."

Badger slumped back in her chair, her face a mask of shock.

"Did you know him?" asked Jacqueline.

"No," said Badger. "But you did."


	10. Asher

"I think you're a little confused," said Jacqueline. "I've never been out of the country. How am I supposed to know a priest in Nova Scotia?"

"His name is Lochlann Asher, and he's not a priest. At least, not in the sense you think. He's… He _was_ a druid."

Jacqueline laughed. "A druid in the Americas? There are hardly enough left to be found on the islands, much less across the ocean."

"What's a druid?"

"D'Artagnan, if you can't keep up, you shouldn't try to join in," Jacqueline said through her molars. "Druids were an ancient order of pagans, but they were all but stamped out two hundred years ago."

"You're wrong, but you're damn close," Badger said quietly.

The sadness in her eyes and voice spoke volumes.

"You're a druid," Jacqueline concluded aloud.

"I am not important. Truth to right, I shouldn't even be here."

"But you are here. Why?"

Badger sighed, knowing she couldn't escape the line of questioning.

"I'm from an ancient sect descended from that of Asher the Great, the first Guardian. I came here to find the Cross of Asher."

"The what?"

Badger pointed to Jacqueline's chest. Looking down, she saw her cross had escaped her shirt again and was glinting in the afternoon sun.

"This? But it's just a family heirloom!"

"Then you truly don't know? Gods. Don't they teach you Christians anything in church?"

"Sure. They teach us to be wary of pagans who happen to be experts in unarmed combat," said D'Artagnan.

"You're an idiot," said Badger. To Jacqueline, she said "May I?"

Haltingly, Jacqueline took the cross from her neck and passed it across the table. Badger carefully depressed the little protrusions at the shorter ends of the cross between her thumb and forefinger. The barest click sounded and the image of Jesus came free in her fingers. She handed the cross back to an incredulous Jacqueline.

"Look closer," said Badger.

Jacqueline peered at the space left by the tiny Jesus. There, etched in the metal, was a single word.

"_CAEDESIS_. What in the..?"

"It's Latin. It means 'blood shed in slaughter'."

"Cheery," said D'Artagnan.

"The man who forged that cross, Asher the Great, left that as a warning. He knew first hand what would happen if it ever fell into the wrong hands."

"You know," D'Artagnan said carefully, "at the risk of sounding dull, I feel a lot more confused than I did before you started explaining."

Badger rubbed her forehead wearily. "It's not just a symbol of faith. It's a key."

"It doesn't look like a key," said D'Artagnan.

"Your friend doesn't look like a girl, but she is, isn't she?"

"A key to what?" said Jacqueline.

"Remember that obelisk you mentioned?"

Jacqueline frowned. "The one the Knights of the Black Tabernacle keep flashing all over town?"

Badger suddenly looked like a younger sibling had just dropped something slimy down the back of her shirt. "The Black Tabernacle? Those know-nothing no-talent hacks are still around?"

"They're the most dangerous group in the territory," said D'Artagnan.

"They're posers. They'd douse themselves in holy water and hide under stone henge for twenty years if they knew what they were really fooling with."

"Which would be what exactly?"

Badger looked at Jacqueline. "Is he always this irritating?"

"Only when his lips are moving. If you let that bother you, we'll never get anywhere."

"Hey!"

"As I was saying, that obelisk isn't quite what they think it is. They seek to exploit its power, but what they don't know is that the obelisk itself is just a casing, a prison for the real power source. The only way to unlock its secrets and truly wield the weapon is with that cross."

"Wait a minute. Power source? You're talking about it like this Asher person locked up the sun," said Jacqueline.

"And you're talking about it like they tell me everything. They don't."

"'They' who?"

"For the third time, it's not important."

"It is to _me_!" Jacqueline took a moment to quiet down again. "I want to know everything, every fact, every detail. I want to know what this Asher person's favorite song was if it'll bring me any closer to the truth behind this whole mess. Please."

There was a long pause before Badger spoke, looking like she was having teeth pulled.

"We're called 'Watchers'. Our order is as old as the Guardians. We are oath-bound to protect the descendents of Asher on their mission to protect the cross until our dying breath. Only our high priests know the true secrets of the obelisk, including Lochlann Asher. Thirty years ago, he fell in love will a woman from Gall and he forsook all but her. He abandoned the Watchers and ran with her, only to be caught a few years later by the Justinians. She was killed, and he escaped across the sea, never to be heard from again, the tosser. How are we supposed to aid him in his life's purpose if we don't know where he is?"

"Wait, Justinians? At the risk of sounding slow, I'm afraid you're going to have to explain what a Justinian is," said D'Artagnan.

"They make the Black Tabernacle look like toothless old sheep. They're the followers of the first Justinian, a Roman emperor who became a demon on earth when the power now locked in the obelisk drove all virtue from his heart and granted his followers their evil hearts' desire. Then the Gods saw how it was going and didn't like it one bit. 'Justinian you wanker,' says God, 'amend your wicked ways or sod off.' But he wouldn't, so he was doomed to spend eternity trying to claw his way out of limbo."

"And his followers went after Lochlann because..?"

"Because they're convinced that if they have the key, they can unlock the obelisk and if they unlock the obelisk, they can wield the power and if they can wield the power, they can break their lord out of his eternal torment, and if they can do that, they'll be made kings on earth and rule over the rest of us like the pharaohs over the Hebrews. Savvy?"

D'Artagnan and Jacqueline sat blinking at Badger for a full minute or two, trying absorb the information.

"Is that true?" Jacqueline was finally able to ask.

"All except for the last part. Chances are, Justinian will just crush his followers along with every other poor sod in the known world and start over."

"Well," said D'Artagnan finally. "That's some information that might've been a little more useful to us a couple weeks ago. Did it ever occur to you to, say, _tell_ her that some insane cult is after her?"

"First of all, it's generally considered a good idea for druids to keep scarce around heavily armed Christians. Second…" Badger cleared her throat, suddenly looking sad again. "It could be my fault that the Justinians found you. I think they followed me here. They hunt you even now, and they're not going to stop until they get that cross."

Jacqueline couldn't completely hide her shudder. As vague and strange as the story had been, she somehow knew in her heart that it was true.

"Almost everyone who knows about this and doesn't want to rule the world is dead," Badger went on. "The Watchers have but one purpose, and that is to ensure the survival of the Last Guardian."

"And that's you," said Jacqueline.

"No," said Badger. "That's _you_."


	11. Everyone's Waiting

AN: Sorry about the delay, folks. The groove is finally back. Thanks for sticking with me.

D'Artagnan was the one who broke the ensuing extended silence.

"Well. I certainly haven't heard a story like that since the feast of fools."

Badger sighed. "I know there's every reason for you not to believe me."

"Where should I start? The part where a pagan is educating us about theological matters, or the part where the Celt mysteriously speaks French? Or maybe the part where you seem to be implying that God uses the word 'wanker'?"

"I was paraphrasing, you dozey donkey. I don't profess to be able to explain it. All I know is what I see. She bears the Cross of Asher, and so must be the Last Guardian."

"But that would make her…"

"An Asher," said Badger. "A Celt."

"See, that's the part I'm having the most trouble with. In fact, I can't begin to list the things that are wrong with that idea."

"There were rumors," Badger said haltingly. "The Watchers never saw it, but some say that Lochlann's lady did bear him a child. As he ran in one direction, he sent their child in the other in hopes that the Justinians would never find her. No one knew where she ended up… until now."

"That's impossible," said D'Artagnan. "She can't be a Celt. Just look at her!"

"If it makes it any easier, she's only half a Celt. Gall is part of France, after all."

"And these Watcher people sent you to protect her? Forgive me, but… You?"

"I'm short, Monsieur. Not inept."

Jacqueline, who had been sitting numb and quiet throughout D'Artagnan's expression of incredulity, finally spoke up. "You know, you almost had me up until now, even with the secret orders and the demons and the mystical nonsense. Hell, it was better than anything I'd come up with. But you're no defender of the right. You're nothing but some crazy… You're nothing! My father was kind and honest and brave. How dare you say that I wasn't his? You don't know anything!"

Jacqueline stood up and stormed toward the cottage door. D'Artagnan jumped up after, followed in short suit by Badger.

"Wait!" Badger called. "Listen. I know how it sounds, but –"

Jacqueline, who was already at her horse's side and trying to pull herself one-handed into the saddle, stopped and turned furious eyes on Badger.

"Here." She took the cross from her neck and slapped it into Badger's hand. "Take this and chase your ghosts somewhere far away from me."

"Mademoiselle, please. You don't understand the danger you're in. Especially now that you know –"

"I don't know any more than I did last week! I'm not a Celt. I'm a Roget, and I'll never be anything else. Thank you very much for saving me. Now stay the hell away from me. D'Artagnan, get over here and be a gentleman."

D'Artagnan gave Badger an apologetic shrug and then went to give Jacqueline a boost into her saddle.

"You can ride a thousand miles," said Badger as they pointed their horses down the trail. "It won't make this any less true and there's no way I'll be able to protect you."

"I don't need your protection," snapped Jacqueline. "I need to get back to work."

With that, she kicked Fairlight into a gallop, leaving D'Artagnan with no recourse but to follow suit. Badger watched them go with a sinking feeling. This was going to be harder than the elders had let on.

"Where are they off to in such a hurry? I was just about to make stew."

Badger glared at Marjorie, who had just appeared at her shoulder.

"Are you happy now? She's not even supposed to know I exist. Now I've driven her farther from her destiny from ever."

"Don't be so dramatic, ma petite. I'm sure she'll come around once she's had time to get used to it."

"She doesn't have time to get used to it, Madge. None of us do." She sighed and ducked into her cloak. "I'll have to prove it to her somehow."

"What?"

"There's got to be something useful in this cursed country. I'll find an abbey and scour the library until I get something solid."

"Like what?"

"I don't know! Maybe I'll find the Wolf himself, drag him before her, and torture him with hot pokers until he says it in so many words."

"Don't be sarcastic, my dear. It's not becoming. Just try not to bring home any strays this time. I don't think I have the strength."

D'Artagnan glanced nervously over at Jacqueline, who hadn't said a word since they'd left the cottage. Actually, she'd spent the entire ride through the forest with her jaw clenched so tight he could see every muscle in her face. Nevertheless, there were a few things that begged discussing before they got home.

"You know, Jacqueline –"

"Not a word, D'Artagnan. Not _one_ word."

"It's just that –"

"Not listening!"

D'Artagnan put his hands up in surrender and was quiet for another four seconds or so, then fired off what he had to say before Jacqueline could interrupt again.

"I know it sounds like a load of scite, and it probably is. But honestly, what reason do you think the girl has for saving your life and then lying to you about why?"

"I don't know! Maybe she's a wandering idiot with nothing better to do. Maybe she's a bard working on a play and she wanted to try it out on us to see if it was too fantastic for a mainstream audience. Maybe she's legitimately insane and really believes that it's my destiny to protect the world from the second coming of some horrible demon who's had centuries to get bored and angry in limbo. I happen to know that my destiny is to protect France, my king, and my comrades from a certain cardinal."

"If you're that sure, then why did you come all the way out here?"

Jacqueline had never wanted to hit D'Artagnan so much, and that included the time he tricked her into covering his dungeon-cleaning detail.

"My name is Jacqueline Roget. I'm from the country. My father was a farmer. My mother loved him. I had a brother who… who died protecting me. My name is Jacqueline…"

Jacqueline's throat closed on her surname and Fairlight instinctively stopped walking. D'Artagnan pulled Noire to a stop next to her.

"I know who you are," he said. "You're brave and decent, and ironically the truest person I've ever known. I don't care if you're French or Celtic or a dancing bear. Whatever it all means, we'll figure it out together."

Jacqueline didn't look at him, quite sure she'd burst into tears if she did. Instead, she took a steadying breath. Before she could say anything however, her eye was caught by something in the tree some distance up the path. The muted daylight was reflecting off of something. Narrowing her eyes, she had the barest moment to identify it as the head of a knocked arrow, which was aimed directly at D'Artagnan's back.

"Look out!"

Marjorie closed the shutters against the gathering wind. It would rain again soon; she could feel it in her rheumatism. And that silly Goddaughter of hers would be caught out in the mess before she could get back from her impossible mission, and Marjorie would be scrubbing mud out of her pants for a week. It wasn't easy being the widow DeGhent.

She heard the wind howl through the open front door. But that was impossible. She'd bolted the door. Unless…

Her hands paused in their task of crushing the dried herbs from her garden as her eyes darkened along with her heart. Slowly, calmly, she turned to face the hulking shape in the doorway.

"So you've come for me at last, Monsieur. I was starting to feel like you were avoiding me."

The Wolf didn't smile. "Where is it? Tell me and I'll make it quick."

"Go home and I won't tell your mother you spoke like that to an old lady."

"I'm not famous for giving many chances."

Marjorie lifted her chin, folded her arms, and just for a moment, heard her dear husband calling her through the wind. She fixed the Wolf with a sad little smile.

"From this life to the next, little man. Everyone's waiting."

Jacqueline threw herself into a flying tackle that knocked D'Artagnan out of the saddle and they landed in a heap on the trail while the arrow whizzed through the newly vacated air and thunked into another tree. Before he realized what had happened, Jacqueline rolled off of him, drew a pistol from her belt, and fired. The archer fell out of the branches, her bullet having found its mark in his throat. He'd barely hit the ground when three more arrows flew and embedded themselves in the trail on either side of Jacqueline. D'Artagnan drew his own pistols and Jacqueline her spare, and they fired into the trees. Three more archers fell, but the forest seemed to sparkle with arrows about to fly.

"Run!" D'Artagnan yelled, yanking her up by the coat.

Dozens of arrows split the air around them as they ran after Fairlight and Noire, who had wisely decided to make themselves scarce. Without missing a step, the musketeers vaulted into the saddles of the trotting horses and then kicked them into a full gallop.

From his perch in the oak tree, Philippe watched them go.

"Put that thing down," he told the archer next to him. "You'll just waste the arrow now."

"But they're getting away!"

"Don't be stupid. The boy isn't even wearing the cross now. If it is where I think it is, then we've done what we came to. There's nothing between the cross and the Wolf now but an old woman."

The sun was sinking over the countryside and distant thunderclaps heralding the coming of yet another storm by the time Badger made her way up the last hill between her and home. She was feeling more than a little disgruntled. The Asher wasn't listening to her, that D'Artagnan fellow was dismissing her, and her hunt for the Justinians this afternoon had turned up nothing but a few ideas about where to go for lunch over the weekend. She tried to tell herself that if being a Watcher was easy then everyone would do it, but she was quite sure that a lot of people would still choose a career in the circus over this plethora of dead ends.

The smell of the smoke hit her before the cottage came into view. Frowning, she hurried to the top of the hill and stopped short at the sight. Cottage DeGhent was a flaming ruin, with little left but the chimney and some blackened rubble about the foundation. Next to it, a tattered shape like a life-size broken doll was flopped on the turf.

"Madge!"

Badger dashed down the hill toward what was left of the cottage, dropped to her knees next to Marjorie, and turned her onto her back. Immediately, she wished she hadn't. Her Godmother's clothes were soaked with blood, her gray hair caked with it. Her face was as sallow and white as death.

"Madge! Wake up, Madge. Please."

Slowly, Marjorie's eyes opened. They were a moment in focusing on Badger but when they did, a ghost of her sly smile lit her face.

"I didn't tell him… anything… ma petite… for once… kept my mouth… shut…"

"Madge, what..? Who..? My God, Madge!"

"Have you… still got it?"

Badger put a hand to her chest, where the cross was safely sealed in an inner pocket of her vest.

"Yes Madge, but –"

Marjorie clutched at Badger's arms and bore into her with her clouding eyes.

"_Don't let them get it_," she whispered. "The girl… _The girl must survive_…"

"Of course, but what about –"

"Bother it all… ma petite… can't you see how… tired I am…"

Realization hit Badger like an exceptionally cruel mad bull.

"No," she breathed. "No, Madge. No!"

"Ma petite."

When Badger looked at her again, the smile was back. The adoring smile that Marjorie saved just for her.

"Don't cry for… me, ma petite… You'll stain… your pretty cloak…"

Badger wanted to grab onto her, to shake her until she gave up the selfish idea of dying, to hang onto her so hard that there was no way she could leave. But she couldn't. It wouldn't have been fair.

"I won't let you down, Madge."

Marjorie put a trembling hand on Badger's face.

"My sweet girl."

Marjorie's eyes closed, and her hand slid down to the ground.

TBC...


	12. Crossroads

AN: Hello again, everyone. Sorry about the hiatus. You'll be glad to know that I spent the semester getting two A's and a B. Unfortunately, this left little time to devote to our heroes. I hope this was worth the wait.

-

"Ouch!"

"Don't be such a baby," Jacqueline said. "It's barely a scratch."

D'Artagnan tried to pull his arm out of her grasp, away from the rum-soaked cloth she was using to clean the wound just above his elbow. They had barely beaten the storm back to the garrison, and now were ensconced in the common room, where the weather was beating down on the roof with the ferocity of an army.

"It's not a scratch, it's a gash," said D'Artagnan. "And you're not helping by rubbing off more of my skin."

"For God's sakes, the arrow only grazed you. Do you want it to get infected?"

He hissed at the sting when she applied more of the alcohol. "Jesus, God and Mary. Who uses arrows in this day and age anyway?"

"I don't know!"

"You don't know? Jacqueline, a swarm of hit-men just tried to assassinate us in broad daylight. I think we ought to consider that Badger may have been telling the truth – Ow!"

"Hold still."

"Would you stop that and listen to me for a minute? Look, I know it's not what you want to hear, but maybe we ought to tell the others."

Jacqueline threw down her rag. "Are you insane? They'll ask every kind of question that I have no answer for. And by the way, have you noticed what's been happening to the people involved in this?"

"Exactly. If something happens to me, there'll be no one to help you if –"

Jacqueline grabbed his shirt-front and yanked him forward, her eyes like sapphire drills.

"Don't you say that, D'Artagnan. Don't you even think it. Nothing is going to happen to you. You got it?"

For once, he recognized that this wasn't one of the times he got to tease her for showing an inkling of concern for him.

"Yes, Sir," he said quietly.

Jacqueline let him go and began wrapping a strip of linen around his arm.

"I still think you should at least let me tell Duval," he tried.

"Great idea, but only after the untimely demises of Siroc, Ramon, your father, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, Louis, the queen, the night watch, the king of England, the court jester, and everyone else in the known world."

"So once he's the last man on earth, I may mention the cross of Asher to Captain Duval. I'm going to hold you to that."

A very loud clap of thunder preceded a knock on the door so light that it was nearly masked by the pounding rain. Jacqueline and D'Artagnan exchanged a look.

"Bit late for a gentleman caller, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, but assassins don't usually knock."

Jacqueline picked up her sword and went to the door, which she cracked just enough to see out onto the threshold. A shadow stood there, bedraggled and small, and making no move to enter. Frowning, Jacqueline let the door open wide enough to allow the lantern light from the common room to spill out onto the stoop and illuminate the visitor.

Jacqueline's jaw fell slack. Badger looked soaked and frozen, but moreover, she looked incredibly fragile. Her skin was as pale as alabaster, her green eyes shining with tears and shock. Her shoulders rose and fell as though she couldn't catch her breath. The rain pounded her mercilessly, but she didn't even blink. The instinctive question of 'What the hell are _you_ doing here?' died in Jacqueline's throat.

"Badger, what's wrong?"

Badger took a shuddering breath. "Madge is dead."

The words, barely squeezed from the girl's tight throat, knocked the breath out of Jacqueline. And with that, it didn't matter who was Celtic or who was telling the truth. All that mattered was a broken heart. By God, Jacqueline did know about that.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Jacqueline reached into the rain and pulled Badger inside.

-

THE GREAT WOLF. THE WET PUPPY. YOU DARE TO COME TO ME AGAIN.

The Wolf screamed as the fire blazed around his arm, filling the darkened burrow with the light of a thousand suns.

"Forgive me! Master, forgive me! Help me!"

A dark, low, horrible laugh echoed in the Wolf's ears with the force of a hammer.

HELP YOU. I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT HELP YOU. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE BUT DISAPPOINT AS TIME GROWS SHORTER?

"But Master, I have brought us closer! I've brought you blood this very day!"

FOOL. IT IS ANOTHER WHO PROTECTS THE LAST GUARDIAN.

Suddenly, the fire collapsed on itself, snuffed in a scorch-mark on the ground. In the comparatively meager light flickering in his lantern, he peered at the pattern in the dirt, the intricate swirls of a rune that he recognized as surely as his own reflection.

The furious roar built in his chest and exploded from his throat as he tore out into the rain.

"_WATCHER!_"

-

"I wasn't there," Badger said numbly. "He followed us to the house and I wasn't there."

Jacqueline turned from hanging Badger's soggy cloak up by the fire and came back to the table where the Celt and D'Artagnan were sitting, grabbing a blanket from one of the cabinets on the way. When she settled the quilt around Badger's shoulders, Jacqueline could feel a deep shiver wracking the smaller woman's body, though her face was as blank as paper.

"Who followed you, Badger?" Jacqueline said, taking the free seat. "What happened?"

Badger continued to stare off past Jacqueline. "The Wolf. He's here. He followed the scent to Madge's house and I wasn't there. I only left for an hour."

"Wolf? There aren't any wolves in these parts, not for miles."

"THE Wolf," Badger said with a shudder. "The Justinians' enforcer. He's spent the past year hunting and decimating the Watchers until only a few of us survived. Sometimes he took out whole strongholds at a time, leaving them slaughtered for the rest of us to find. And now he's here." She finally looked at Jacqueline, her green eyes spilling tears. "He murdered Madge. He killed her in the middle of the day and I wasn't there!"

Jacqueline knew she should be suspicious, but there was something in Badger that couldn't be acted, couldn't be faked. There was no adequate word for it, but she knew it well from the deaths of Gerard and her father. More by instinct than reason, she put her good arm around Badger's shoulders. Badger let her forehead fall onto Jacqueline's shoulder and quietly cried, missing the wide-eyed stare D'Artagnan was giving them. Jacqueline didn't however, and gave him her best scram-or-so-help-me look.

"Excuse me, won't you? I'm going to find Siroc before my arm falls off from gangrene."

The room was quiet for a long time after he slipped out, except for the thunder and Badger's quiet sobs. Jacqueline just kept holding the girl with the strange feeling that she'd fall to pieces if she let go.

"It's my fault," Badger finally said.

"It's not your fault."

"I shouldn't have come. I should never have come."

Jacqueline frowned as a question suddenly occurred to her. "Badger, why did you come here?"

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know where else to go."

"Not here at the garrison, here in France. You're not here on a vacation. Is there some Celtish prophecy that pointed you here or something? Did the Watchers send you?"

Jacqueline was horrified at first by Badger's reaction, thinking she'd hit a nerve and thrown her into a bout of hysterical balling. When she sat up and looked at her however, Jacqueline saw that she was laughing, her puffy red eyes bright with irony.

"The _Watchers_? They're mostly dead and the ones who aren't dead don't even like me. I wasn't druid enough for them. I never was."

"Are you kidding?" Jacqueline asked, amazed. She hadn't met a lot of Celts, but Badger was pretty close to what she'd always imagined. Well, maybe she was a bit shorter, but she had rune tattoos and used words like 'sod' and 'wanker'. What more did these Watcher people want?

"They were right. A real Watcher would've known the Wolf had followed him. A real Watcher would've been able to protect you and Madge properly."

Jacqueline sighed, disappointed. "Right. I suppose it was too good to be true."

"What?"

"That the Celts at least might have caught onto the idea that women can be decent fighters. I guess some things are universal."

"It's not because I'm a girl, you silly frog! It's because I… I'm half French too."

For that bombshell, Jacqueline had no good retort. Eventually, she was forced to go with the decidedly lame one that was clanging through her head.

"No you're not."

"Yes I am. Madge was my godmother."

"You're not! French people don't tattoo their faces and worship pagan Gods… Not that there's anything wrong with that."

"My mother loved a French soldier. She came here to wait for him. For six years after I was born, she waited for him to come back from war. Then she took to heart that he must be dead and took me home with her to Eyre. When she died this winter past, I wanted to come back for her. But more than that, I had reason to believe –" Badger stopped herself and shook her head. "Why are we talking about me? You're the one with an entire secret society after her."

"_Two_ secret societies," D'Artagnan called through the thin wall.

"D'Artagnan, shut up!"

"Jacques?" said Badger.

"_What_?"

"I know there's no reason to believe me, but loving Gods, woman. Madge is dead. The Wolf is here and he's going to find you and kill you too if we don't do something."

"What are you saying, that I should run? The musketeers are more than a match for any one man. And even if they weren't, you can't expect me to leave my comrades and my king to slaughter when this Wolf-person finds his way to the garrison." Jacqueline shook her head. "I won't do it. I can't leave now."

Badger looked like she wanted to beat her head against the tabletop, but was so drained in both the physical and emotional sense that she lacked the strength. She could at least take comfort in Jacqueline's use of the word 'when' in lieu of 'if'.

"If that's your last word on the matter, it'll be only fair to warn you that I'll have to stay stuck to you like a leprechaun to the blarney stone. The Wolf won't have you, my lady. I swear it on my life."

Jacqueline sighed, somehow knowing the subject was about as open to debate as the color of the sky. "I'll take what I can get at this point, whether you turn out to be crazy or not. Just please drop the 'my lady' business, or I'll be forced to cleave your tongue for my own safety."

"Savvy. I suppose I shouldn't ask… Why _do_ you go as a man?"

"I'll save that one for another day, for _your_ own safety."

Badger nodded, reached into her pocket, and pulled out Jacqueline's crucifix.

"This isn't for me."

She passed it across the table and dropped it into Jacqueline's hand. The musketeer looked at it, feeling its familiar weight. Every fiber of her being continued to reiterate how ridiculous these crazy claims were. Every fiber that is, except the one that couldn't shake how strange it was that no matter how hard she tried to get rid of it, the cross kept finding its way back to her.

-

Mazarin stood staring out the window at the rainy night, not looking away when he heard the hidden passage of his study open and shut.

"Something's happening, Philippe," he said. "I can feel it. If the rain doesn't stop soon, there'll be flash floods. It's like nature herself is trying to wash something away."

"Master –"

"They failed again today. LePonte still has the cross. I know."

Philippe swallowed hard. "Besides that, Master."

Turning, Mazarin found Philippe with his eyes downcast and his hands outstretched, the obelisk resting in his hands.

"Fool!" Mazarin roared, snatching the relic. "Do you know what the operative term in 'secret society' is..?"

His voice trailed off. The obelisk, though as still as a stone in his hands, was… pulsing. In the rhythm of a heartbeat, it was almost like heat, but with more force. It echoed through his fingers, up his arms and into his core.

"What's happening, Master?" begged Philippe.

"How many times do I have to tell you, if you can't keep up, it's best not to try. Philippe, I think it's time we had a formal conversation with Monsieur LePonte."

"But Master, isn't that what we've been trying to do?"

"We've gone about it wrong, little man. I thought we only needed the cross and had to go through LePonte to get it. It's becoming more and more clear that the man and the relic are linked such that we cannot have one without the other."

TBC… honest.


	13. Meetings

AN: All right, all right! I know this was a long time coming. There's only so much of me to go around these days. At least it's a long chapter, and I hope it was worth the wait.

It was nearing midday when D'Artagnon jogged into town, having to weave his way through the full swing of the market place.

"Jacques, wait up!"

Jacqueline glanced over her shoulder and slowed her pace down the cobblestones until he fell into step with her.

"Bright and early, eh D'Artagnon?" she teased.

"Well, you'll have to forgive me. The next time I spend half the cold, rainy night getting shot at by a satanic cult, remind me to leave a wake-up page. What are you doing here?"

"I'm on foot patrol. What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you! I didn't know Duvall had you back on duty yet, and when you weren't in your room, I thought –"

Jacqueline gave him a look. "What? That our new friend had murdered me in the night? Sorry, she was too busy crying on my shoulder."

"Where is Badger anyway?"

She jerked a thumb off to their left, not needing to look to know that the green-cloaked figure was gliding through the shadows at the periphery of the bustling crowd, barely visible even to those who might actually be looking for her.

"What's she doing?" D'Artagnan asked, frowning.

"She's been like that all morning," Jacqueline said drearily. "She insists it's necessary for my safety."

"You don't sound too happy about it."

"Have I mentioned lately how much I hate drawing attention to myself? Musketeers are supposed to be body guards, not _have_ them."

"Well, what sort if body guard is she supposed to be if she's all the way over – _Augh_!"

So suddenly that she may have appeared out of thin air, Badger was there with one hand clamped onto D'Artagnan's face and the other raised aloft to strike him down. Jacqueline's voice stopped her just in time.

"Badger, no!"

Badger blinked. "Oh, it's you." She let D'Artagnan go and awkwardly dusted off his shoulder. "Sorry, lad. Thought you were someone else."

Jacqueline took Badger's elbow and pulled her off to the side.

"Badger, you can't go doing that to everyone who talks to me!"

"My lady –"

"Ssh!"

"I mean Jacques, it's for me to protect you. I failed Madge. I'm not going to fail you."

"Fine, but have I mentioned how much I hate drawing attention to myself?"

"Why?"

"Monsieur! Monsieur LePonte! Yoo-hoo!" a voice trilled from nearby.

Badger watched Jacqueline cringe up at the be-frilled woman who was trotting up to them, waving her handkerchief madly at Jacqueline the whole time as though trying to flag down a ship at sea.

"Among other reasons…" Jacqueline muttered to Badger before turning a polite smile up at the young lady. "Bonjour, Mademoiselle LeFou."

Monique the fishmonger's daughter stopped so close to Jacqueline that she was almost standing on the musketeer's boots and made a rather impressive show of fanning her bosom.

"Monsieur, it is a miracle! They told me you'd gone missing and I was so afraid that I would never see you again!"

"Well. Here I am," said Jacqueline.

"I should say, I might have been told that you'd returned. Here I was, sick with worry, and praying for you every single – Oh, dear! But you are _wound_ed!"

"It's nothing, honestly."

"You brave man, you must not spare my sensibilities. How horrible your ordeal must have been! I simply cannot wait to hear every detail."

"Another time perhaps, Mademoiselle LeFou. Now if you'll excuse me, I have –"

The nymph swatted Jacqueline's arm with her handkerchief. "It is 'Monique,' you silly boy! How many times must I tell you?"

"Monique, I hate to cut the conversation short, but I do have a patrol to –"

"Nonsense. You simply mustn't go another step until I've had a chance to restore you." Monique threaded her arm through Jacqueline's and began to pull her off on a different course.

"But I –"

"Not another word. Just you wait: A few weeks of my tender care, and you'll have enough stamina for the both of – Eek!"

Monique tripped to a halt, having almost run into Badger, who had materialized directly in her path.

"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle," Badger said. "What do you think you're doing with my fiancé?"

Jacqueline's moment of shock was outdone only by Monique, who luckily was too busy spluttering to notice the musketeer's expression. If she had, it certainly would have ruined everything.

"You? His fiancé? _You_?"

"Yes, and I would appreciate you not pawing him like some over-amorous cat."

Monique looked Badger over until a haughty smile curled her painted lips.

"He's not your fiancé."

"No?"

"No. A gentleman such as he is would never take a savage for his wife."

"Hm." Without another moment's hesitation, Badger took Jacqueline's face in her hands, stood up on tip-toes, and kissed her full on the mouth. Jacqueline had just enough presence of mind to keep her eyeballs in her head until she heard Monique's footsteps clicking angrily off down the cobblestones. It wasn't until the footfalls had faded into the crowd that Badger broke the kiss.

"Is she gone?"

"Who cares?" D'Artagnan grinned as he sauntered up to them.

"Bloody harpy. I can see why you avoid her. Half a minute of listening to her and I'm exhausted." Badger frowned at Jacqueline, who was still speechless. "Oh, don't look so shocked. I told you it's for me to protect you."

"The Celts aren't masters of subtlety, are they?" D'Artagnan mused.

"Sweet Jesus, what have I gotten myself into now?" Jacqueline muttered.

"There you are!"

The three of them looked up to see Siroc jogging towards them through the crowd. He stopped at the edge of their huddle and was a moment in catching his breath.

"You should've run faster. If you had, you might've made it in time for –"

"D'Artagnan!" Jacqueline cut him off.

"What? It's as good a way as any to introduce a Celt, isn't it?"

"What Celt?" said Siroc.

Frowning, D'Artagnan and Jacqueline looked to Badger, finding only an empty space where she had just been. A scan of the crowd showed no sign of her either.

"That's going to drive me crazy," said D'Artagnan. "Siroc, I swear I'm not going mad. She was right here. Tell him, Jacques!"

Jacqueline shrugged. "I never saw this oaf before in my life."

"Never mind that," Siroc said grimly. "Ramon's been hurt."

Philippe watched the three of them jog off toward the garrison from behind the pillar of the church, a slow, wide smile overtaking his face. Finally there was some good news to tell the cardinal.

Jacqueline, Siroc and D'Artagnan ran into the garrison common room to find Ramon perched on the table top, grimacing as he held a bloody towel to the back of his head. His right eye was nearly swollen shut, leaving the left to glare doubly hard at the newcomers.

"Not so loud," he said. "I already feel like there's an angry carpenter at work inside my skull."

"Ramon, are you all right?" Jacqueline asked.

"Fine! I've just been knocked unconscious and left for dead. All in a day's work, right?" He hissed as Siroc peeled the towel away and examined the wound. "One minute I was on patrol through the woods. Then I heard someone yelling for help. I went off the road to see what was up and then I got jumped by a pack of masked twats."

"The Order?"

"Unless masks and hooded robes are coming into style," said Ramon.

"But they didn't kill you," D'Artagnan observed.

"No, and after I took down a dozen of them too. I had the last few right where I wanted them, and then their biggest brute took me down from behind. Then he leaned over me and said 'Where is it?' My head was spinning so much that I thought there were about seven of him, otherwise I would've reached right up and tied a knot out of his –"

"Where was what?" Jacqueline asked with a sinking feeling.

"That's what I said! Then he said something about a cross. I said 'What cross?' and he punched me in the face. When I woke up, they were gone."

"God help me…"

"God help you if you ever meet that galoot, Jacques. He fights as dirty as his breath."

"The good news is, he didn't crack your skull," Siroc announced.

"How can you tell?"

"That would be the bad news."

D'Artagnan winced. "Did you get a look at him?"

"Sure I did. He was the one in the mask. Come on, Siroc. Let's get this over with."

Siroc helped the tall Spaniard stagger toward the laboratory, leaving D'Artagnan to sigh after them.

"Looks like they're upping the ante, Jacques… Jacques?"

Jacqueline urged Fairlight into a leap over a fallen tree in the road. The mare sailed past the obstacle and landed perfectly back into her run. Her blue eyes were set on the way with the focus of an eagle and her mind so tunneled that she was nearly oblivious to everything but her goal.

And then Badger appeared in the road and stood directly in Fairlight's path. The mare reared to a stop so close that her flailing hooves pawed the air inches from Badger's stony face. Jacqueline, unable to keep the saddle at the steep incline, tumbled to the ground. As though sensing the ire of her mistress, Fairlight quickly settled and sidled several feet away.

"Badger! What on God's green earth is wrong with you?" Jacqueline shouted.

"Me? Am I the one galloping into a dark forest where musketeers have an annoying habit of getting jumped? Are you mad?"

"I did not ask you to follow me around," Jacqueline said, angrily getting to her feet. "You can't just keep popping up whenever you feel like it!"

"I beg your roaring pardon, you crazy frog! Just what did you mean coming out here by yourself?"

"I meant to keep any more of my friends from getting hurt because of me. Ramon –"

"I know! Jacques, neither your God nor mine would have chosen a fool for your position, so think! They're using your friends to get to you."

Jacqueline laughed bitterly. "So what am I supposed to do? Watch them fall one by one like my brother and my father? That's not going to happen while I'm alive!"

"Keep it up and that'll be a moot point, won't it?"

Jacqueline drew her sword, plunged its point into the ground, and advanced on Badger, actually forcing the Celt backwards half a step.

"What do you want from me?" she shouted. "You come here and tell me to forget everything I've ever known and everything I've ever believed, and for what? A dream? Some fantasy that for all I know isn't true? No dream is worth that, especially if it means more good people have to die."

"What do you want me to say? That I lied? I didn't. If I could take it all back and make it all untrue, don't you think I…" Badger cut herself off, took a deep breath, and met Jacqueline's blue eyes with bare levelness. "I told you, it's for me to protect you. Even if it's from yourself."

Before Jacqueline could ask whether that was some kind of threat, the forest air was split by a gunshot. Jacqueline snapped her head in the direction of the sound, just as it was punctuated by a dozen more. Off in the distance, a great black billow of smoke was rising above the trees. Before another word could be said, Jacqueline snatched her sword, vaulted onto Fairlight's back, and kicked her into a gallop.

About half a mile from where the two women had been standing, there was a small village of miners and farmers. That morning, it had been the same pleasant if dull community it always was. That afternoon, it was something of a different story.

Captain Gilbert relished the chaotic scene through the eyes of his mask. The handful of villagers who hadn't run when they first saw the approach of the captain and his fellows were being rounded into the center of the town like sheep by a pack of collies. Several bodies were already strewn about the grounds with gunshots to the back, a few farmers having met their end in a hopeless bid to save their houses from the torches of Gilbert's subordinates. Those not engaged in the chase were now setting fire to the thatched roof of a fourth and fifth house. Gilbert smiled as a particularly spritely girl was carried bodily to the huddle and dropped next to a cowering man and his children. The girl bounced to her feet and glared.

"Stop resisting," Gilbert said loudly. "We have not come to kill you today, but it's won't be much out of our way if you make things difficult."

"What do you want with us?" the girl demanded.

Gilbert advanced on her, coming to a stop so close that she could count his eyelashes.

"Fortunately for you, nothing you can give."

She spat into his mask, narrowly missing an eyehole. Furious, he raised his arm to backhand her with all the force and ominousness of a tidal wave.

A sound diverted his attention at the last moment. Frowning behind the leather, he turned toward the forest line and saw a familiar angry figure pounding toward him on a white horse.

With a collective battle cry, the half dozen black knights in the company ran to engage the musketeer. Gilbert noted vaguely that the villagers seized the opportunity to flee, letting them go in favor of watching the action.

Jacqueline drew the two loaded pistols she had tucked in her belt and fired them simultaneously, hitting one man in the kneecap and another in the throat. Not missing a stride, she dropped the spent pistols and drew her sword just in time to meet the next challenger with an upward stroke that opened him from navel to chin. Still in motion, she swept over Fairlight's other side, parried an overhead chop from the next man, and brought her sword up into an arc that ended with the tip of her sword punched through his back. Her keenly focused horse continued to carry her past the falling corpse into another brief engagement that consisted of a single parry and a side-cut to a man's carotid artery. She regained her balance just in time to duck the shot of the sixth and apparently wisest man, who had learned that it was unwise to engage this musketeer in close combat. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have another plan should he miss. The bullet whizzed over her head, and he was still drawing his sword when she ran him through with hers.

Another gunshot pierced the air and the earth tumbled out from under Jacqueline. She hit the ground and tumbled with the momentum, ending prone and breathless on a patch of dead grass. Lifting her spinning head, she saw Fairlight down on her flank several paces before her, her hooves pawing the air in a feeble attempt to rise.

Jacqueline scrambled to the mare and was horror struck to find a shock of bright red blood cascading down Fairlight's white foreleg from a wound in the withers.

"Ssh, easy girl. Easy," she whispered helplessly, stroking the mare's neck.

"I say, little man. It seems the only thing more hazardous than being you is knowing you."

Shaking with her building rage, Jacqueline got to her feet and faced the man. He was standing with his sword swinging casually from his big hand, and a grin of cocky anticipation showing through his mask.

"I must say, the legends didn't exaggerate. Are all musketeers so resilient, or is it just you?"

Jacqueline raised the bloody tip of her sword and sighted him down its length. "Yield, in the name of the king."

He laughed. "My great and worthy opponent. I knew you wouldn't disappoint me."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've searched the world for someone who could give me a decent fight, a real battle. Who else but the Last Guardian?"

"You should have just come after me if you wanted to live to tell about it. You screwed up when you went after my friends."

"Yes, your friends. How does it feel to know that I used them just like the watchers are using you? How does it taste? Bitter and cold like digging for roots in the middle of winter? Like when Mazarin killed your father? Tell me one thing, great warrior. Why did you let that poisonous leech continue to live? Or did you just not like the old man enough to avenge him?"

Sheer fury propelled Jacqueline into an attack so explosive that Gilbert found himself stumbling into a retreat against the ferocious strikes of her blade. She struck at him as though he were Mazarin, as though he were Bernard, as though he were Justinian, and he alone was responsible for everything that had happened. It went on until he regained his bearings enough for some semblance of strategy, and met one of her wild strokes with a block that locked their hilts together. In that instant, he snaked out one long leg and swept Jacqueline's feet out from under her.

Once again, Jacqueline was down on the ground, the leviathan looming over her with the hilt of his sword raised like a cudgel.

In the middle of his downswing, a miniature cyclone spun into him. Leaping over Jacqueline, Badger landed a kick squarely in the center of Gilbert's chest, making him stumble a step backward. As Jacqueline watched, Badger pounced on his moment of imbalance, pinning his sword arm under her right, and raking the clawed fingers of her left hand across his face. In doing so, she caught the edge of the mask and sent it flying off to land in the dust.

All three of them froze: Gilbert with his face exposed and stinging from Badger's fingernails, Jacqueline frowning as she recognized the captain of the Cardinal's guard. But before she could voice her amazement, her eye was caught by Badger. The Celt was staring into Gilbert's sneering face, her own suddenly white as lilies. In her green eyes was the sort of shocked terror that Jacqueline had always thought reserved for standing face-to-face with the Prince of Darkness, and it was only magnified by the trembling whisper that escaped Badger's slack throat.

"_The Wolf_…"

TBC! And thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I wouldn't have done it without you.


	14. Gilbert

Captain Gilbert, The Wolf, or whatever his name was supposed to be, curled his lip into a grin that revealed strangely elongated canines.

"If it isn't the Badger," he rumbled. "All the way from the island just for me. You're just the skin disease that wouldn't quit, aren't you?"

Jacqueline watched in shock as Badger, too petrified to react, was shoved viciously straight into the musketeer, who barely managed to catch her. Scrambling back to balance, Badger began to back them both away as Gilbert began to advance.

"For pity's sake, run!" Jacqueline yelled at the huddled villagers, who did not need to be told twice. Gilbert didn't even glance at them as they fled. "Badger, what on earth –"

"It's The Wolf, Jacques. The Justinian's enforcer. It's him."

"What are you talking about? This is the captain of the Cardinal's guard!"

"That arrogant pig?" Gilbert spat on the ground. "The Cardinal is a means to an end that's been a long time coming. And now I've come for you, Jacques LePonte."

"Jacques, run," Badger said, not taking her eyes off of Gilbert. "Run as fast as you can, as far as you can, and don't stop until you hit either a mountain or an ocean."

"I'll knock the mountain down and split the sea with my fist. Nothing keeps me from my prey. You know that."

"You'll have to go through me," said Badger, though she did not sound excited about it.

Gilbert laughed, low and horrible. "I've gone through a hundred of your kind. I can't wait to see why you think that you alone can protect the guardian more effectively than they could."

"Run, Jacques! Run now!"

Gilbert snarled and swept a clawed hand at Badger's head, obviously with every intention of knocking her skull clear off her shoulders. Badger ducked for her life and took the half-second that Gilbert was in regaining his balance to whirl around and shove the bewildered Jacqueline back with all her might.

"Run! He'll kill you!"

But of course, she didn't. Jacqueline was a musketeer, and musketeers didn't run when others were in trouble, as was obviously the case when Badger was seized from behind in Gilbert's massive arms and lifted off her feet. Jacqueline drew a pistol from her belt and took aim.

"Let her go, Gilbert!"

Gilbert responded by squeezing in on Badger's ribcage so hard that her joints could be heard cracking and the breath was driven from her lungs, leaving her face to contort in a silent grimace. More 

concerned that Badger was about to be crushed than the by possibility that she may accidentally be hit by the bullet, Jacqueline fired. The shot hit him near the elbow, leaving a smoking, bloody hole in the sleeve of his coat. He frowned at it as though a gnat had just bitten him. The distraction was just enough for Badger to throw her head back against his face. Gilbert dropped her, clutching at his bleeding nose as the Celt wheezed on the ground. Jacqueline threw her empty pistol away, drew her sword, and lunged. Gilbert batted the glade away with his bare hand and seized Jacqueline's jacket with the other. Lifted a good foot off of the ground by Gilbert's single impossibly strong arm, Jacqueline found herself staring at the same broken teeth and putrid breath that had shown under his mask when this all began.

"Time to go, Guardian," he purred.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Jacqueline reached out and tweaked his broken nose, eliciting a howl of anguish. Released from his grip, she had a moment to reflect that this was someone who wasn't used to people fighting back. This was just before he slammed the heel if his palm into her sternum, propelling her about twenty paces backwards through the air until her back slammed into the nearest tree. Breathless and dazed, she slid to the ground, vaguely thinking that she now knew what it must be like to get shot in the chest with a canon.

Badger threw herself at The Wolf, ramming her shoulder into his protruding belly. The effect was rather like a squirrel trying to tackle an oak tree. Gilbert swatted her away with a thoughtless back-hand that nearly embedded her in the ground and advanced on Jacqueline once again. Still reeling from the previous blow, Jacqueline lurched to her feet and brandished her sword once more. When he tried to bat it away again, she circled the blade and twisted behind him, achieving a satisfying nip across his midsection as she did. Enraged, he grabbed for her and she whirled by him, slicing down his back. Still unfazed, he pounced again. Jacqueline launched herself into a dive-roll through his legs, and he finally grimaced as her rapier slashed across both of his knees.

"Stop doing that!"

"What's the matter, Wolf? Never met a fox with claws of its own?" Jacqueline taunted from her defensive crouch.

He surprised her by smiling. "You're right. I've dreamed of a Guardian who would be my great and worthy opponent at last, and I have to say that you might have come awfully close one day. But I'm afraid we just don't have the time."

Suddenly he doubled up his fists and hammered them into the ground. The ripple it sent through the ground was like an earthquake, and shook the foundation right out from under Jacqueline's feet. She fell hard on the still-shaking ground as the trees around them began to lose root and leaf. Fissures opened in the earth from one side of the glen to the other, boulders that hadn't moved in a hundred years rolled from their resting places, and still Gilbert towered, his eyes now glowing an inexplicable demonic red. There, in the smoldering of his eyes, Jacqueline saw her first glimpse of hell, and for a moment, all that it held struck her motionless.

It was real…

Gilbert reached for her.

"No!"

Badger flung herself onto Gilbert's back and wrapped her thin arms around his neck. She clung on as he bucked like an angry stallion, only losing her grip when he slammed himself backwards against a large boulder, effectively, for lack of a better word, squashing her. She hadn't even flopped to the ground before he spun around and smashed a fist into the side of her head. Despite the savage blow, she shook her head and pulled back to throw a punch of her own. Gilbert hit her again, this time succeeding in dropping her to her knees. With blood now dripping from her nose and lip and her eye rapidly swelling shut, she swung limply at Gilbert's thigh (the only part of him she could reach). He hit her a third time, and she fell motionless to the ground.

Only then did the earth stop shaking. Jacqueline got to her feet as Gilbert hoisted the limp Celt above his head as easily as someone might lift a pillow. Then he reared back, his arms primed to slam her across his upraised knee.

"No, don't! Don't! I'll go with you!"

Gilbert froze mid-action and turned on Jacqueline with a snarl.

"I'll go with you," she said again. "Just don't hurt her anymore."

"No…" Badger mumbled through her punished jaw.

"You think I'm interested in deals with you, you stupid little girl?" Gilbert roared. "I'll take you with my hands covered in her heathen blood, and then I'll kill everyone you've ever…!"

He gasped and suddenly fell to his knees, dropping Badger on the ground as he clutched at his forearm. A beastial scream erupted from his throat, echoing with the agony of someone being burned to death.

FOOL. SHE OFFERS HERSELF TO YOU AT LAST AND YOU REFUSE?

"Master… please…"

IF YOUR PRIDE IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY FREEDOM AND NONE, I PROMISE TO SPEND ETERNITY MAKING YOUR PUNISHMENT A THOUSAND TIMES WORSE THAN MINE.

"Please, Master! Forgive me!"

The pain emanating from the obelisk tattoo gave a final twist so horrible that he gave momentary but serious thought to biting off his own arm, and then disappeared, leaving him a gasping heap.

GO.

Never one to argue with the demon he served, he swept himself together and vaulted to his feet, only to find that Jacqueline was nowhere in sight.

Jacqueline tore through the woods, ducking under branches, leaping over stones, and heedless of the brush that whipped, poked, and scratched.

It was true. It was true. It was true.

The Justinians. The Watchers. The Guardians. Asher. It was real, all of it. But it couldn't be real! But it _was_ real. Jacqueline ran as though she could make it all untrue if she just put enough distance between herself and any visual reminders, or, failing that, at least save Badger's life and maybe her own. She just hoped that Gilbert was as slow on his feet as he looked.

A long, chilling howl filled the air. The sound rang loud and clear that if she couldn't run any faster, that particular hope was going to be dashed. He was coming for her, and he was never going to stop until he had her… Or the cross?

Thinking quickly, she tore the chain from her neck and tossed the crucifix into the hollow trunk of a dead tree off the path without missing a step. If Gilbert wanted her, he wouldn't get the Cross of Asher in the same trip. There was another howl then, much closer now. Spurred by the cry, she ran even harder, the acceleration not even waning until she nearly collided with the figure that was suddenly there in her path.

Jacqueline came to an abrupt, teetering halt, inches before the black-robed, masked man who was there on the path as suddenly as a jack-in-the-box. For the barest moment, she felt annoyed: Any other time, she would have delighted in the opportunity to shove one of those ugly masks into her sword and rub it around in his own inadequacy. At the moment though, she just didn't have the time. She spun to circumvent him, only to run up against another hooded man. She turned again to find another, and then another. Effectively surrounded, she made a frustrated noise.

"Sweet Christ, don't you people ever give up?"

"Make it easy on yourself, lad. Come with us. Believe me, it's better than the alternative," said one of the men.

It was the last thing he'd ever say with a complete set of teeth. The next moment, his mask was crushed under Jacqueline's fist, and his face beneath it. He was still falling to the ground while Jacqueline lashed out her hands, each hooking around the neck of another man and then smashing their hooded heads together. They too dropped like a couple of cracked coconuts. The remaining man backed nervously away, pulling a small dagger from his sleeve and brandishing it in an unsure hand. Jacqueline lashed out a long leg and kicked the weapon from his grasp, spun, and rammed her knee into his belly. He bent over in pain, and Jacqueline smashed her doubled fists onto the back of his neck.

With all barriers thus felled, she launched herself back into her run and made it about ten yards, only to be clothes-lined by a thick, black arm that shot out of the cover of the forest like an arrow from a bow.

Dazed, she looked up from the flat of her back to find The Wolf standing over her once again. He seized a handful of her shirt and yanked her shoulders off the ground, putting his contorted face inches from hers.

"You're mine now. _Guardian_."

Before she could say a word or make a move, his fist eclipsed the sun and smashed across her face.

TBC…


End file.
